![]() ‘Elevated levels of cortisol – the stress hormone – suppress the immune system, which predisposes to infection and, long term, even cancer,’ says Russell. (My stress response is easily activated, I suspect, and it’s not always to do with the menopause). ‘Sleep is immensely complicated, and if sleep is disrupted you activate the stress response, which is fine in the short term, but long term stress can lead to multiple problems,’ explains Professor of Circadian Neuroscience at Oxford University, Russell Foster. This can make you feel sleepy by increasing the production of GABA, a neurotransmitter or brain chemical which helps sleep. There is also the fact that our progesterone levels go down in menopause. Of course, in menopause, temperature increase is likely to come hand in hand with night sweats, the nocturnal version of hot flushes. Therefore, our natural defence mechanism wakes us up, and, for many of us, that’s the end of it. With your eyes closed, you don’t know whether the house is on fire, or if you’re hot because of hormones. It’s as simple as that.’ Your body perceives a rise in heat as being a threat. Otherwise, you’re restless, uncomfortable and fidgeting. ‘You need to lose around one degree of body temperature to sleep. ‘Disturbed nights can be a consequence of temperature changes created by hormonal disruption,’ continues Neil. ‘A recent paper suggested that the effect hormones have on sleep is merely because of the fluctuations in body temperature.’ Whatever the merits of his observation, only a man would say ‘merely’ in that context. Oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone all play a part in the quality of our slumber. ‘Hormones affect women’s ability to sleep throughout their lives, from the point of puberty, through pregnancy, and menopause,’ says sleep expert Dr Neil Stanley. I mage: Copyright Kate Martin Turn up the heat: how hormones affect sleep I’ve now had poor sleeping patterns for nearly a decade, and suffered top-to-toe restlessness, from mind to legs.Īuthors Mariella Frostrup and Alice Smellie. Insomnia was the first symptom of hormonal change that affected me, starting with baffling and frustrating nights of jerking awake and not managing to fall asleep again. This seems to confirm poor sleep as a symptom of menopause, from peri- to post. According to a 2019 survey in the Sunday Times, an extraordinary sixty per cent of forty-five to fifty-four-year-old women and sixty-five per cent of women aged between fifty-five and sixty-four said their sleep was rubbish. The only upside to this nightly game of insomnia roulette is that I am not alone. ![]() and I’m getting closer to the moment when I’m going to either have to medicate or decide whether I can afford to be exhausted the next day. The part for a kitchen appliance I keep forgetting to order, how to take revenge on the patronizing BBC manager who cancelled my podcast, where’s that blue dress gone? It’s three-fifteen a.m. Occasionally, I am able to raise an exhausted smile out of what I dream up as a priority worry, but more often I’m shocked by the banality of some of my thoughts. Within minutes of my return to bed, I feel the delicious fog of slumber evaporate, my heart rate rise and my brain begin its relentless scan for topics to keep me engaged. I know this because I’ve checked the clock three times since I first crept to the loo at one forty-five a.m. I love being horizontal between my linen sheets, and I fall asleep reasonably swiftly. Menopause and lack of sleep are as closely intertwined as a pair of young lovers. ‘That sleeping thing.’ It turned out she was suffering from insomnia, but what she really meant was, ‘I think I may be perimenopausal. The other day, at a friend’s house, she whispered to me, ‘I think I’ve got that thing that you have.’ I looked at her perplexed, mainly because we were alone in her kitchen, yet she was whispering.
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