Brittani Lancaster has gained an incredibly engaged following as a body-positive content creator - talking almost 1M followers on Tiktok engaged. Focusing on her body’s source of fuel and energy - measuring hormones and smartly using supplements - helped resolve puzzling insomnia and de-stress in the way that’s right for her.
Who: Brittani Lancaster, 24
Living in: Portland, Oregon
Working on: Sleep
1: Overall health approach
My motto is “balance is key.” It originally started as a food thing: I started posting “What I Eat In A Day” videos on TikTok, which people really seemed to resonate with since I was actually consuming enough food for my body, as opposed to a lot of the other videos out there that were very restrictive and not very well-balanced. But the more I embraced the saying, the more I realized that it can really relate to anything, like exercises, friendship, family, and a healthy work-life balance.
It wasn’t always like this, though. When I was sixteen years old, I developed anorexia and was suffering from severe restriction. Then, when I was eighteen, I experienced a binge eating disorder. I found recovery during college when I learned about intuitive eating and got help for my eating disorders. Now, I’ve been in recovery for over five years, which has been wonderful!
So my health has been a huge priority for me ever since, especially since there have been multiple different things in my health that were affected by my eating disorders.
2: Why were you excited to try Base?
Initially when I first started Base, I knew right away that I wanted to do the sleep test. My whole life, I’ve been such a good sleeper. We call it “a Lancaster thing” because good sleep runs in my family - my dad has even fallen asleep while standing up while deep-sea fishing!
So around the winter and springtime, I knew something was wrong because I was having insane insomnia, and I’d never had such bad restless sleep before. It was going back and forth between two things: either I’d toss and turn until three am, or I would fall asleep and wake up at 2 for no reason and then go back to sleep and wake up at four.
It was just so weird and I was not getting enough sleep at all, maybe three or four hours a night. So when I saw that Base had a sleep test, it was very intriguing.
3: Taking the test and predictions
Base was my first time doing an in-home lab test, and it was a wonderful experience. Doing the blood test wasn’t bad at all - I just read the instructions and followed along. Sending everything in was also so easy.
I knew I was stressed out when I first took the test, so I did consider that stress was maybe a partial factor in my bad sleep, but I didn’t know just how bad my cortisol levels, aka my stress hormone, were. I also just didn’t know how to treat stress.
4: Results from test 1
My Base test really showed me a lot more about my health that I didn’t know was happening. My results showed that my cortisol levels were all out of whack. They were spiking in the afternoon but then staying high until the evening, which can really interfere with your normal sleep cycles. I also found out that I was Vitamin D deficient.
5: Integrating recommendations into daily life
After getting my results, I started taking Vitamin D, magnesium, and melatonin supplements, all of which were suggested to me by Base.
I also really started to work on my work-life balance for my cortisol levels. I do social media, but I also work a 9-5 job for another company, and I was at a point where I was letting them both take over my life instead of fuel my life. I realized that I needed to start creating a clear and healthy boundary between the two.
There were other lifestyle recommendations from Base as well. I started going on more walks, running, and incorporating yoga into my routine. I also started using deep breathing: if I started to get really stressed out, I would just stop everything and take three deep breaths, and it’s amazing what that can do!
Now, my body is not nearly as stressed as it was in the beginning, and I’m sleeping at least eight hours a night.
6. Results from the re-test and next steps
I got amazing results on my second test. When I took my first test, my Vitamin D levels were at 16, whereas the optimal range was somewhere between 30-60. Three months later, my retest showed that I am now at 29, so there’s been a lot of improvement there. I’m not at the minimum yet, but I’m right underneath, so I’ll keep taking my Vitamin D supplements and increase them during the winter like I was recommended.
My cortisol levels are now looking great as well and are at the optimum levels. I’m going to continue to destress my life any way I can!
I would really recommend Base to literally anybody who is having struggles with their health and doesn’t know what their endpoint is. I’ve even recommended it to my stepmom, who I think would like it since she’s very interested in her health.
Start your Base journey. Get 20% off with code BRITTANI20.
