I Just Want Some Sleep!!!
"I'm not sleep-deprived; I'm just in a committed relationship with my snooze button. We're going through a rough patch."
Are you finding it random if you get a good night's sleep?
Sleep issues impact over 47% of women of perimenopausal age.
This increases to 60% in postmenopause (1).
The inability to sleep has major impacts on quality of life and health, including increasing your risk of chronic diseases, decreasing your ability to function during the day, impacting your mood, patience, body weight, exercise training, and sexual wellness.
Sleep plagues women overall, as on average women get seven hours of sleep per night, despite most women requiring more.
Take a moment and assess if factors that influence sleep are present in your life before considering perimenopause/menopause:
- Family members with sleep or psychiatric disorders
- Prior history of being a poor sleeper
- Chronic pain
- Light sleeper
- Sensitivity to hormone changes
- A busy, active brain, especially at night
- Anxiety, worry, rumination
- Depression or bipolar disorder
- History of trauma
- Being a ‘type A’ person
- Shift work or a spouse that works shift
- New medication, stopping a medication
- Stress: financial insecurity, divorces, others
.png "ethnic woman suffering from insomnia")
What you used to do won’t help...
Women typically spend night hours finishing chores, working, or are up so late doing ‘life’ they do not get to unwind with television or entertainment until the time they should go to bed. We know all the ‘don’t look at screens before bed', but really? It is the one time of the day when we can have peace and tune out reality and relax.
Are we really going to put our screens away? Maybe you super motivated women will do it, but for some of us, this is not helpful information. As women, we power through sleeplessness and don’t consider getting help for insomnia or other sleep disorders like restless leg syndrome given other priorities.
This takes a toll, however, on our health year after year, and perimenopause represents a time where we need to be proactive about our sleep and recognize it as important as our physical activity, nutrition, and mental wellness. We can’t continue to be sleep-deprived zombies feeling groggy and lethargic, just ‘getting through the day’ versus taking charge with energy.
Meet Helen
Helen is a 47-year old woman who has always cherished the time when everyone is in bed to relax and unwind. Unfortunately, as her children got older, this time period pushed later and later into the evening. She has gotten into the habit of going to bed at an hour that never allows her to achieve even seven hours of sleep.
She uses the time to catch up on chores, work, and to spend time in another world watching her favorite reality television shows. By the time Thursday arrives, she is a complete zombie and can barely get through the day. Each weekend, she says she is going to be earlier but each week passes and she has yet to tackle her sleep hygiene.
Why is sleep impacted during perimenopause?
Sleep issues such as insomnia, an inability to fall asleep, stay asleep, racing thoughts, sleep apnea, or wake disturbances, which are issues with the quality, timing, and amount of sleep or sleep apnea where breathing stops and starts make it difficult to take life by the ovaries. For some premenopausal women, the period before menstruation can be a time of insomnia due to the increase and drop of estrogen and progesterone.
In perimenopause, which on average spans 4 to 5 years but can last over 10 years, hormone levels are like a roller coaster, swinging back and forth. Typically, a woman’s period spaces out further and further until it stops due to these hormonal fluctuations. Melatonin, the hormone that helps with sleep, also declines slowly during menopause, impacting sleep.