Day 22: Understanding Sleep

This week is designed to help improve your sleep.

Sleep is something we often take for granted until it’s a problem. We can sleep too much. We can sleep too little. Our sleep can be disrupted by trouble falling asleep, trouble staying asleep, waking up too early, insomnia, pain, discomfort, nightmares, night sweats… the list goes on and on.

Insomnia can follow us in all stages of menopause. Anxiety, discomfort, and night sweats can wreak havoc on getting a restful night’s sleep. And when we don’t sleep well, we don’t feel well.

Regardless of the reason, sleep disruptions can make a huge impact on our quality of life. And the more chronic it becomes, the bigger the consequences.

So just why is sleep so important?

You might think that sleep is the body’s time to rest. In some ways that’s true. But research has discovered something pretty remarkable. While your body is sleeping, your brain is hard at work. And what it’s doing makes a huge difference to what you experience while you’re awake.

There are actually two types of sleep – REM sleep and something called slow wave sleep, or S-W-S. Most of our sleep is S-W-S sleep, characterized by relaxed muscles and slow, deep breathing. This kind of sleep helps the brain and body rest and recuperate. On the other hand, REM sleep is when the brain becomes highly active and we often have vivid dreams.

While you’re sleeping, your brain does rest, but it’s also hard at work – creating and consolidating memories, and processing information. One of the most important things the brain does during sleep is clear out neurotoxins that can negatively impact your physical and cognitive health. When the brain isn’t able to do its job, we feel it. This cleansing of the brain’s lymph system has been linked to memory problems and brain fog. And we all know that when we don’t get enough sleep, we can feel foggy the next day.

Brain fog can be quite common for us when we’re going through menopause…that sense that you can’t quite clearly focus on a piece of information. You know the information but staying focused and acting on it is a struggle. And it’s exhausting! Not surprisingly, sleep disruption is also right up on that list of things we experience in menopause. Are they related? Maybe….

Deep restorative sleep tends to occur earlier in the night. As the night goes on, your sleep becomes lighter. You will alternate between light sleep and REM sleep. This is the time you’re more likely to be awakened by night sweats or anxiety.

If you’re having trouble sleeping, you might find that it’s impacting your other symptoms too. Did you know that a lack of sleep is linked to more severe hot flashes? And night sweats, which are hot flashes that occur at night, can of course impact our sleep quality. It’s a vicious cycle, but it doesn’t mean we’re doomed with poor sleep forever!

Now that we’ve understood the science behind why sleep is so important, we’ll move on to looking more deeply at what causes our sleep problems. In this course, you’ll learn just how you can use cognitive behavioral techniques to address the root causes, and get better at sleeping.

See you in the next lesson!