You probably don't need me to tell you that sleep is important. Sleep impacts everything from workout results to hormones, mood, energy levels, and pain response.
Let's take a quick look at why sleep matters before we talk about what we can do to help.
It's helpful to view sleep as the body's "reset" process. Sleep is commonly understood to take place in a four-stage cycle:
Light (N1). During light sleep, also called stage 1, the parts of the brain associated with arousal activity and controlling muscle movement slow down. As the name suggests, a person can be easily awakened during light sleep.
Deeper (N2). During the deeper sleep, or stage 2, body temperature and heart rate drop.
Deepest (slow-wave, N3). During slow-wave sleep, or stage 3, energy restoration occurs. It's harder to be awakened during this phase, and the body is less responsive to outside stimuli. As we get older, slow-wave sleep decreases.
Rapid eye movement (REM). During REM sleep, there is an overall increase in brain activity. Plus, parts of the brain that regulate muscle movement and brainstem regions that control breathing and heart rate all increase their metabolic rate. This is when a person's eyes dart around; it's the stage during which dreams occur.
(The "N" in N1, N2, and N3 stands for non-REM sleep.)
This cycle repeats every 90-120 minutes. Most folks need between seven and nine hours of sleep every night to function optimally.
The different phases of sleep enable the brain to recharge and replenish the energy stores it needs to function - and in turn, keep the rest of the body functioning - during the day.
Sleep can be a big pain point for women in menopause. About 40-60 percent of menopausal women have sleep difficulties, with waking up after falling asleep being the most common. It's even been suggested that sleep difficulties are the core symptom of menopause that makes all the other ones worse.
Sleep disruptions are multifactoral, meaning that things like lifestyle, socioeconomic status, genetics, chronic pain, and overall health can also play a role.
THE SIDE EFFECTS OF SLEEP DEPRIVATION
In addition to a worsening of other menopause symptoms, reduced energy, and heightened pain sensitivity, sleep deprivation can lead to other troublesome and far-reaching side effects, including:
Compromised cognition
Amplified mood swings and mental health struggles
Increased stress
Disrupted appetite and weight gain
Stalled training and recovery
Worsened overall health
Let's take a closer look.
COMPROMISED COGNITION
When we're tired, we tend to be reactive, rigid, and reductionist. Basically, we revert into grumpy toddlers!
Everything seems harder when our sleep stinks, particularly complex psychological and cognitive tasks, like making judgments, managing information, or considering new ideas. We also struggle to consolidate new information, affecting the formation of new memories.
Add this to the hormonal and cognitive changes that can occur in menopause, and it's common for sleep-deprived menopausal women to feel like they have brain fog, like their memory or recall is impaired (which it can be), or like they're not functioning at their normal cognitive level.
AMPLIFIED MOOD SWINGS
If you've ever had a rough night's sleep followed by an equally rough day, you know the impact lack of sleep can have on your mood.
Hormonal changes can already make a menopausal woman feel like she's on an emotional rollercoaster. Add in lack of sleep, and that's a recipe for a turbulent day.
Notably, many menopausal women say they are more prone to feelings of anger, frustration, and irritability. Lack of sleep may contribute to these feelings, making the experience even worse.
INCREASED STRESS
We're going to talk about stress in a separate post, but to put it simply, poor sleep can be a powerful stressor. You've probably noticed that the only thing that feels worse than being stressed out is being stressed out and completely exhausted.
Poor sleep (in addition to being stressful in and of itself) can make stressful life events seem more stressful than they'd seem to someone who isn't sleep deprived. In turn, stressful life events can also affect the quality of sleep, leading to a vicious cycle.
The increase in stress hormones triggered by poor sleep leads to increased sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity (fight or flight). Chronic SNS activity - chronic stress - can lead to a host of issues, including worse sleep, anxiety, increased hot flushes, increased blood pressure, and more.
Unless we're being chased by a bear, we need to promote parasympathetic activity as a counterbalance. The parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) supports our bodies in doing basic life-sustaining tasks, like digestion and recovery (hence why it's often called the "rest and digest" system).
DISRUPTED APPETITE AND WEIGHT GAIN
Sleep deprivation disrupts the hormones that regulate appetite and can increase SNS activity. When this happens, glucose tolerance decreases, evening cortisol levels are higher, and appetite increases due to lowered leptin (the "satiety hormone") and increased ghrelin (the "hunger hormone"), often resulting in a strong desire for energy-dense foods. In addition to feeling hungrier than usual and having stronger cravings, we may also not recognize that we're full.
This leads many people to reach for calorie-loaded beverages or highly processed foods high in sugar or fat and lacking in important nutrients - and eat more of them than usual. While these foods can provide a hit of instant gratification, chances are, they don't align with your long-term goals.
This perfect storm created by inadequate sleep can lead to a stall or an increase in body fat.
STALLED TRAINING AND RECOVERY
Getting enough rest not only helps us sustain the willpower to get our exercise in, but also provides us with the physical energy necessary to train hard. Plus, plenty of good sleep is one of the best things we can do for ourselves in terms of physically recovering from tough training sessions.
More sleep means better training sessions and faster recovery. Less sleep means worse training sessions and slower recovery.
If your goal is to get stronger, gain muscle mass, lose body fat, or a combination of all three - sleep is essential.
WORSENED OVERALL HEALTH
Sleep deprivation can lead to an increased risk of:
Cardiovascular disease
Type 2 diabetes
Obesity
Heart attack and stroke
It also has the potential to worsen gastrointestinal disorders, like inflammatory bowel disease, and affect immune function and inflammation levels.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Unfortunately, we can never control exactly how much sleep we get or how well we sleep. Some variables (e.g., environmental disruptions, night sweats) are more or less out of our control.
While you may not be able to permanently banish hot flushes or get a gloriously uninterrupted nine hours of rest (though there's always the possibility!), you can improve your sleep behaviors to increase the likelihood of quality shut-eye. And when you implement tailored sleep strategies, other symptoms may calm down too.
At Moxie Members Online, you'll find some recommendations on improving sleep quality / quantity.
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