Your 90% sleep solution (Part 5 of the Vault 5-Part Sleep Clarity Masterclass)
= finding your 90% sleep problem
Welcome to the 5th and Final part of the Vault Sleep Clarity Masterclass.
In part 4, the question we ended with was: “How do I figure out what to do instead of just finding the next things to try?”
Here is the central challenge: You cannot get an “MRI for bad sleep.”
If your back hurts, you can get an image. You can see the slipped disc, the compressed nerve. The type of back issue informs the solution.
Sleep has almost none of this.
(This is, of course, distinct from medical sleep disorders like sleep apnea which can and should be diagnosed clinically.)
So, if we don’t have an MRI, what tool do we use?
Your sleep-disruption pattern.
This may sound counter-intuitive in an age of increasingly sophisticated lab tests and sleep trackers, but your lived experience—morning vitality, cognitive clarity, gym performance, mood stability, and how rested you feel—remains the essential indicator of sleep quality.
Consumer sleep trackers can show you the signatures of poor sleep—low HRV, reduced REM, fragmented stages—but they can’t tell you why. They’re not the “MRI” for sleep.
They also estimate stages with reported ~60-70% accuracy and miss the subtleties, such as the quality of REM sleep and its critical role in brain protection.
Labs show static snapshots and are unable to capture the dynamic, nightly process of sleep.
Sleep pattern recognition reflects what these tools miss: It reveals the underlying recovery and brain waste-clearance processes that determine next-day function.
The sleep disruption pattern points to the problem(s)—and the problem(s) informs the solution(s).
A 2-4 AM wake-up with a racing mind is a different pattern—and points to different problems —than an inability to fall asleep.
The 90% Sleep Solution
Your 90% sleep solution comes from identifying the one factor that, when addressed, resolves 90% of your sleep disruption. I cannot tell you your specific 90% problem in a single email (or in a Masterclass of 1-many emails such as this).
But I can show you the patterns I see most often in health-literate adults like yourself in midlife and advanced age. Let’s see if these sound familiar:
Your sleep often tops out around 5–6 hours, even when you give yourself more time in bed.
You frequently wake between 2–4 a.m. feeling wired and tired, and often followed by just light, broken sleep, if at all.
This kind of broken sleep became more common in midlife, even though your habits are solid (sensible caffeine timing, a stable schedule, and a reasonable sleep environment).
Some additional patterns I often see:
You wake to pee one or more times most nights, even when you’ve been sensible about evening fluids, and you cannot get back to sleep after.
You feel the same level of stress more intensely than before—more anxious, more worried.
Men: more early-morning awakenings and lower morning motivation; trouble putting on muscle despite a conscientious training and eating routine.
Women: more fragmented sleep around cycle changes or feeling warmer at night than you used to.
If > 2 of these patterns are true for you, your sleep disruption is who this Sleep Clarity Masterclass—and Sleep OS: Hormones—was built for.
In many of the individuals I work with who already eat well, exercise, and pay attention to sleep hygiene, a large part of their 90% problem relates to hormonal shifts that now benefit from more targeted support.
Many mistake this for a “stress” problem, but stress response to similar stressors doesn’t get worse in midlife on its own. What has often changed is how well testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone buffer that stress and protect sleep.
You are now feeling that same stress more acutely, and it is fragmenting your sleep. At that point, your sleep physiology needs structured support—not just another small tweak.
Mid Life Hormonal shifts: The “Hormonal Ceiling”
Testosterone, progesterone, and estrogen are foundational. They broadly influence systems critical to sleep: your circadian rhythm, your metabolic balance, and your nervous system’s stress axis.
When these systems are unsupported, it doesn’t matter how well you manage sleep hygiene. You are trying to fix secondary factors while the 90% problem is still acting as a ceiling on your results.
Here’s why the 3 a.m. wakeup happens:
Progesterone modulates GABAergic tone — the brain’s primary “stay quiet” signal. Testosterone dampens HPA reactivity so the stress axis doesn’t fire prematurely. Estrogen supports circadian timing and temperature regulation. Around 3–4 a.m., cortisol begins its pre-dawn rise; when any of these buffers weaken, the brain can misread that transition as a wake signal.
That’s the 3 a.m. alertness pattern — not anxiety, but insufficient hormonal support during a vulnerable window.
This is why sleep hygiene can’t fix it. The problem isn’t the room temperature or your screen. The problem is that the “calming” signal is too weak to hold through these hours.
Your Sleep Clarity = Your “Precise Comprehensiveness.”
This is the clarity we’ve been working toward.
Finding your 90% problem informs your “Precise Comprehensiveness.” It tells you which Builders and Disruptors matter most.
This was my goal for this 5-part Masterclass: to give you the lens to move from trying everything to the clarity of what to do.
So, for those who now feel ready to act on this sleep clarity, here are 2 possible paths forward.
Path 1: If you’re mapping this yourself
You now have the framework. This path is for those who want to do the deep research. Your process might look something like this:
Identify Your 90% Problem: Use the pattern recognition questions from this Masterclass. Go deeper: journal your sleep, energy, and cognitive clarity for 2-3 weeks. If your patterns differ significantly from the one described, remember: different patterns point to different ‘sources’ of poor sleep.
Consider Lab Testing: Based on your pattern, you may choose to run relevant blood or functional tests (e.g., inflammation markers, advanced cortisol profiling, metabolic markers, continuous glucose monitor) to help identify additional clues.
Map Your System: Learn the mechanism of your 90% problem. Then use that understanding to identify which factors are Builders and which are Disruptors for your 90% problem.
Execute “Precise Comprehensiveness”: Address your specific Disruptors and implement the right Builders—applied in a biologically appropriate sequence. This isn’t just doing the things; it’s doing them in the right order so each step builds the physiological conditions for the next. This also includes ongoing protocol management: analyzing inputs, iterating based on response, and making these changes sustainable as your default over time.
For the depth and comprehensiveness that matches the “doing” plan inside Sleep OS: Hormones, this path typically requires 6–12 months of work for someone with that background who also has the time to synthesize 150+ peer-reviewed studies per hormone (Sleep OS Testosterone, for example, is built from 170+ peer reviewed articles).
If you would rather have that work done for you and follow a structured implementation plan built on that comprehensive work and on the backdrop of 20 years of experience in health optimization, Path 2 could be the more appropriate choice.
Path 2: The “Doing” Plan for the 3am + 5-6 Ceiling Sleep Pattern
If that pattern—midlife changes, wired and tired, or anxious at 3 AM—resonated, your path can be streamlined. Your 90% solution involves supporting the hormonal systems that govern sleep & stress architecture.
This is SleepOS Hormones. It is the step-by-step “doing” plan to help address this 3am wake ups and 5-6 hour ceilings with precise comprehensiveness (even if you’re already on HRT or medications).
You can view my most comprehensive and popular Trio Hormone Sleep Solution
Or, start with the essential Sleep & Stress Single Hormone Solution
(All Sleep OS solutions are self-paced, self-contained, and do not require lab work, ongoing calls or memberships.)
(BTW, most members have active professional lives and hobbies and spend about 1–2 hours per week with the material during the first 15–21 days, either in 2–3 sittings or in short 15–20 minute blocks across 4–5 days, to evaluate where they are and plan the next 5–10 days of their sleep recovery.)
Already on TRT/HRT? Many members are.
Having hormones available (whether its from TRT/HRT or normal labs) is not the same as your body using them effectively; Sleep OS: Hormones helps you support hormone levels plus how your body actually uses those hormones to support sleep.
It is built to work whether you’re on HRT, considering it, or trying to avoid it.
I sincerely hope this 5-part Masterclass has provided clarity for you.
This approach—finding your 90% problem instead of following universal protocols—is the core ethos of The Longevity Vault. I built it because I saw too many intelligent health-conscious individuals invest years—even decades—of energy on advice that isn’t relevant to their situation.
Having had poor sleep most of my adult life—and having solved it to experience the complete opposite—my passion is helping people make this transition to robust sleep.
Sleep that isn’t fragile. Sleep that can handle real life: an occasional late dinner, a stressful day, an occasional glass of wine.
Because it’s not just about the sleep itself.
It’s about the foundation for energy, intellectual curiosity, and longevity—the capacity to cook, garden, read, and play with your grandkids. It’s the confidence of knowing you’ll sleep well enough to show up as your best self tomorrow.
And it’s the mental freedom—the time and brainpower you’re no longer spending hunting for the next tip that gives you a “little, sometimes” result.
That energy goes back into the hobbies and people you love.
Until next time,
Kat
P.S. Don’t have time to figure it out? Are you time-constrained and prefer a fully guided process instead of years of self-investigation? Or perhaps you need help identifying your 90% problem in the first place?
I work with a small number of clients each quarter on specifically this:
Identifying your specific 90% problem (or multiple contributing factors)
Mapping your Builders and Disruptors based on your unique physiology
Building your fully personalized “doing” plan from the ground up.
If you’d like me as your mentor on this journey, you can learn more about my Sleep Clarity Mentorship Program & the application-only Sleep Recovery Concierge program here.
P.P.S. Optimal hormone function isn’t just about hormone levels—it’s also about hormone transport, the ability of hormones to be used at target tissues and cells, metabolism/clearance, and HPG/HPA signaling.
SleepOS Hormones addresses these pathways through non-pharmaceutical, self-paced strategies that require no prescriptions or appointments, as well as the disruptors of optimal hormone function.
(This system is synthesized using a biologically logical sequence—each step building the conditions for the next—from 170+ peer-reviewed references for testosterone, 220+ for estrogen, and 150+ for progesterone).
