The Sleep-Deprived Truth of Menopause (and What You Can Do About It)

As we hit perimenopause and age, sleep becomes one of the most fundamental things for our longevity and our quality of daily living but it becomes more and more elusive. 

According to research, sleep issues like early morning wake up, trouble falling asleep, and staying asleep impact over 47% of women of perimenopausal age. This increases to 60% in post menopause.

There is a rise in sleep issues such as sleep apnea and let’s not even talk about restless leg syndrome - more like a cruel human system failure creating torture. According to the CDC, more than 50% of perimenopausal women sleep less than seven hours a night. By contrast, 70% of premenopausal women sleep more than this amount.

The main driver of sleep change is progesterone; progesterone is a natural relaxer that creates a state of sleep induction and a hypnotic state. For those of you on hormone therapy, make sure to take your progesterone in the evening. As one PAUZ member shared, her clinician did not tell her this, and she was finding herself sleepy during the day.

According to Dr. Alison Kole, sleep expert (askthesleepMD), progesterone also helps to keep your airways open and relaxed. When progesterone declines, we see a rise in sleep apnea and other sleep disturbances due to this.

Lack of sleep increases your risk of chronic disease, impacts your cognitive functioning, your libido, and your motivation to exercise and eat—basically zaps your quality of life and work productivity. We face challenges with our mood and patience, and it creates a hormone situation ripe for weight gain.

A helpful resource if you are struggling is "The Women's Guide to Overcoming Insomnia" by Dr. Shelby Harris that walks through sleep and how to maximize it. Similar to PAUZ, she is an advocate of creating some baseline data on your sleep. Tracking and monitoring some key factors around your sleep. As humans, we have a poor ability to actually assess what we do and what is happening. We have a sleep tracker tool in our PAUZ Possy community.

So, what can you do?

According to Dr. Kole, it is important to invest time in understanding the root cause of your sleep disturbances and addressing these before adding in pharmacological sleep drugs or supplements.

• Hormone therapy- can support improved sleep, in particular by increasing progesterone but estrogen also has a complicated and important role in sleep
• Cognitive behavioral therapy & Meditation or Mindfulness- there is evidence to support the impact this can have on sleep
• Your evening sleep is impacted the moment you wake up- exercise, stress reduction, avoiding certain foods, caffeine, and alcohol after 2 pm and 8 hours before bed
• Check out our podcast to learn more!

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