I thought I would write something about sleep and how it can be affected by our hormones. Obviously, post birth and having a little one who wants to say hi and lets you know at 2am & 4am and 5am every night, is going to affect your sleep! However, it is important to get quality sleep still, whilst you can, even between the kids waking you up.
The same goes for those in their late 40’s or early 50’s who are going through the peri-menopause. You may get to sleep but then a pattern kicks in and every night you begin to wake up at 2am and your mind is tick, tick, tick!! Before you know it is 6am and you are just dropping off.
The problem with both examples, is our body clock then begins to get used to waking up and carries on with this pattern of waking in the night. It can disrupt so much the following day – irritability as you have less patience with the kids, your partner or just someone who can’t park a car!! Over time it begins to affect our lives and functioning properly as well as our mental health and mood.
What can you do about it?
Don’t just put up with it. With babies / kids obviously it is harder as you can’t do much about their going through a growth spurt and being hungry at 3am, but as I said you can do something to ensure the sleep you do get is quality sleep.
- The 1st thing is to try to do the natural, non-prescriptive solutions. Those of you who are having hot flashes/night sweats and woken by those or just wake with a busy mind – maybe try some natural sage or menopausal herbs & see if they help.
- If you know you are woken or you wake around 2am then try going to bed earlier and get a good few hours of quality sleep before the disruption.
- So many of us are low in the mineral Magnesium. It can really help if you take it at night, give you quality deep sleep before getting woken up by little one or by night sweats. It helps relax your muscles as well as a whole host of positive effects on our body and nervous system. So something like Cytoplan’s Magnesium Citrate may help or other good quality brands with a magnesium chloride, glycinate or citrate.
- For all of you, I am sure you all know:
- avoid working late,
- avoid a hard workout late,
- avoid eating a heavy meal late
- avoid looking at your computer / phone late.
- have a notepad by your bed, so if your mind is busy, just write it all down to get it off your mind
- We are being told these things all the time – if you do any of the above, try a month of NOT doing them and see if your mind quietens.
- Speak to an expert! Maybe you need to top up your hormones – progesterone can really help your sleep – but you need to talk to an expert to see if it is right for you and if you want to go down the HRT route.
Hormones & their effects on sleep
Our hormones get disrupted and we start running out of them!! Well essentially that is sort of the easiest way to describe it – we begin to get depleted – just like those who have low iron, we can have low levels of hormones. Hormones are a massive part of our life – they are the reason we have our get up and go in the morning, have periods, moods and energy.
You know my passion is educating and encouraging you all to learn about it. Start following your period cycle and how your periods are – if you have daughters encourage them to too.
If you know me, you know I am also always trying to encourage you to look into menopausal symptoms and even those of you who have a new baby and may have sore joints suddenly, feel a bit weepy and low. Our hormones are very often at both said stages of life, a little bit all over the shop, hence we are out of sorts & so are they.
Understanding it and recognising that maybe you just need to know more about it and have some help is a strong trait. Accept it ….. that sometimes you just need to go to see the expert to have it explained and see if they can help. There is absolutely NOTHING WRONG in doing this. Why fight against something that happens to us.
Often we don’t do this till we have put up with no sleep, brain fog or feeling weepy & no confidence for a few years before we do anything. So if you are reading this and think oh maybe I should do something – GET IN TOUCH with me. I can advise and give you the right people to talk to who KNOW what you are going through and will not judge you.
Time to do something about your lack of sleep – act NOW !!
