If you’re wearing a Fitbit to bed, like a patient I saw last week, you might be seeing pretty colored charts that confirm just exactly how poorly you slept last night. And if you’re like her, it may only be increasing your stress about what you already know: You’re tired! You’d like to sleep through the night!
Yes, as you’re likely tired of hearing, it’s hormones. Estrogen and progesterone are in decline, and the mix of hormones (add cortisol, the “stress hormone” to the cocktail, too) may be less friendly to sleep than it once was. Hot flashes, which can happen day or night, come with a surge of adrenaline, from which you need to recover before you can settle back to sleep.
A few of the people I’ve talked to for The Fullness of Midlife, our podcast, have had some light to shed on our sleeplessness. Joan Vernikos, a retired NASA health science researcher, says sleep is “like a cleaning service in an office. ...The cleaning service starts out by emptying the garbage cans, by tidying up, picking up—and that’s what happens with the brain during sleep in the various cycles. If you wake up and you don’t sleep well, not only are you going to make mistakes the next day, but you’re not going to detox your brain.”
Menopause can sometimes bring its own befuddlement, right? Memory lapses. Foggy thinking. Well, add in some sleep deprivation and a brain in desperate need of a “detox,” and you can imagine a day that you’d rather forget.
Another podcast guest, Dr. Pamela Peeke, gave us a pep talk about making “sleep hygiene” a priority. She points out the relationship between sleep and diet: We’re much better able to be in control of our appetite—not because we lack self-discipline but because of busy hormones at work in our bodies—when we’re well-rested.
Make “sleep hygiene” a priority? Well, it sounds good. And there’s plenty of reason to do it, from easier healthy eating to clear-headed days. Here’s what it takes:
A perhaps unexpected side effect? Since stress and fatigue are two of the three most common obstacles to sex (the third is lack of privacy), you just might find yourself with a little more romance in your life.
Makes “sleep hygiene” sound a little sexy.
Dr. Barb DePree
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