Practical Tips for Sleepless Nights in Menopause

Today on the Menopause Uprising Podcast we have Tom Coleman talking about all things sleep and menopause.

Sleep is crucial for us but sometimes due to menopause, it can suffer. Tom is a passionate advocate for health and helps people transform their lives and their sleep through proven evidence-based science. Tom offers actionable and practical tips, sharing clear and straightforward solutions.

To find out more about Tom click HERE

Transcript -Automatically Generated
Welcome to Menopause Uprising with me, your host, Catherine O'Keeffe. Sleep, a crucial aspect of menopause and one that I really don't think I can ever talk too much about. Today, I'm joined by sleep experts, and scientist Tom Coleman. We talk about sleep like a thermometer, the inflammation aspects, the cognitive chewing gum, and the all essential steps you can take to ensure you get a good night sleep.

I hope you enjoy the session. At the end, if you could like, subscribe, and review, would be fantastic. Thank you.

I always say that one Of the key aspects of thriving through menopause is getting sleep right. And I know my partner in crime in really believing in the power of sleep is Tom Coleman. Tom, thanks for coming on to the podcast today. And I know you're as passionate as I am when it comes to the restorative repair importance of sleep, but maybe just to kind of give us that bit of background, Can you maybe just chat about why sleep is important?

Of course. Um, thanks for having me on. Uh, really, uh, nice to see you again. And nice to, to chat about sleep. I, I always love to, uh, talk about how powerful it is, how important it is, how beneficial it is. And some, you know, people ask me, when does sleep impact you? This, yes, it impacts everything from, you know, from a physical standpoint and a psychological standpoint.

And just to, just to briefly go over some of those, um, if we talk about the restoration that happens, uh, from a physical perspective. All of the tissue repair, um, the damage we've done throughout the day, the oxidative damage, all that type of stuff is repaired at night when the body is in a dormant state.

It makes sense, right? Um, From a hormonal perspective, and we can, we will talk about hormones later and certainly in terms of menopause, I mean, hugely, hugely important, your endocrine system balances out, like we know that if, if you're not getting sufficient sleep, it has an immediate impact on hormones and, uh, you know, very, very powerful drivers of not just, you know, physiological functions in the body, but Our mood and everything else.

So everything from oestrogen to progesterone to testosterone and all of the hormones we need sleep to mediate and to find balance and immunity really important as well. Inflammation in the body is is mediated through sleep. Inflammation is an is an important part of first immune response. Uh, with With our immune system, we need balance.

We don't want an underactive immune system or we don't want an overreactive immune system. And sleep is what mediates that. And we make many immune cells. Our body restocks on immune cells and You know, we can even specifically talk about like mass cells or T cells or natural killer cells. We know that if you get less than five hours, your natural killer cell count drops by about 70%.

So there are consequences to missing out on sleep and saying that, you know, humans are great. We can, we can, we can get by for a certain period of time. That's the kind of, some of the physical stuff. Um, things like body composition are impacted, uh, cortisol levels impact that, um, from a psychological standpoint, then your brain flushes itself out.

We have a buildup of plaque throughout the day. There's a lot of research there on things like Alzheimer's disease and things like that. Um, so the brain flushes itself out at night, it cleans itself, it gets rid of toxins, lymphatic drainage, and we embed. Positive emotional experiences that we've had throughout the day.

And then we disassociate a very stressful event. And we, we, we know sleep on it, right? Sleep on it, just sleep on it. Don't make decisions when you're in this state of being exhausted cognitively, emotionally, and physically. And somehow after a good night's sleep. sleep, it doesn't seem as bad, the problem we had.

And we get a, we get a, maybe a new perspective on it and we're able to make a balanced decision on it. So. It's like that movie Inside Out, you know, where at nighttime she stores the memories that she wants to keep and then let's go, let, you know, the ones that you don't need. Yeah, that's exactly what your brain is doing.

You're dreaming then through your dream phase of sleep. And that's kind of sorting out emotionally, your subconscious, what's gone on and processing it and seeing what do we need to keep? What do we need to rehearse for real life? Because even dreaming is often rehearsal. for a real life situation. So maybe that's a stressful event.

Maybe it's a worry that you have. So your subconscious rehearses that in dreams so that you'll be better equipped to do that in, in, in, in, in the next day. So, um. You can find your solution in the dream, can't you? Absolutely. And a lot of, People like Nikola Tesla and a lot of Einstein and people who struggled with problems would, would induce sleep states to wake themselves up so that they're, and they would find solutions in, in those waking moments, in the moments just as they woke up because you're free from a lot of the, um, limitations maybe of your own, um, conscious thinking and a lot of inventions.

You know, the guy who's asked the question. Kids, please know that they have a past and so thinking about the future. So the people it reminds me of, you know, it's, it's you know one of, uh, um, it's hard, um, it's a challenge and not to go too far. But obviously I just realized. I've got to actually use the language to, you know, tell people that they can not afford to credit TV.

That's where I go back to just how important sleep is. And like, if we even go back to like, you know, a young child, a baby, we know the difference between a child who's had a good night's sleep versus one who hasn't. And it's the same, like, I'm an absolute bear if I don't get my eight hours sleep. And I, you'll feel it the next day, right?

But before I want to ask you some questions about that, but can we just go back to inflammation for a minute, Tom, because when we get older, inflammation is. One of the key aspects of our health that we're really looking to kind of reduce inflammation. Yeah, absolutely. So when we look at sleep, just, so where, where is the sleep coming in there in terms of protecting us?

So if we look at, well, first the inflammation. We could say it's the root cause of things like heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, like they are inflammatory in nature, you know, um, I've had to learn a lot about this topic, um, because of a family history of heart disease and stuff like that. So like cholesterol is half the story.

The other half is inflammation that happens in the lining of our arteries. That's. Okay. Damage that we do and then the body tries to heal it and that's where we have plaque buildup and etc. Etc and so inflammation is is is massively important and Inflammatory cytokines are like proteins that your your body releases these it's part of the First stage of an immune response to something so at night we secrete growth hormone we restock and We repair the damage.

And so the inflammatory cytokines are reduced and the body has a chance to do the repair. Now, if you're not getting the right amount of sleep and quality of sleep, that's not happening. And the inflammatory cytokines remain high. You can test this in a lap. You can, you can test someone's cytokine level, um, you know, with four hours, five hours sleep versus eight hours, and you'll see.

a difference. There is a, there is a clear marked difference. So now we know that the body then will react if it's in an inflamed state. So like there was a very famous study done years ago, which was like a meta analysis, which is at the top. If you look at the hierarchy of studies, like in a meta analysis, there was a huge sample size and they found that people, if your body is systemically inflamed, you're, you're, you're more likely to be obese.

And they even put. a certain amount of obesity down to being in an inflamed state. Your body will treat energy differently when it, when it comes in. So inflammation is important. It's, there's a three stage process in, in immune response, inflammation, remodeling, and rebuilding. So those things need to happen.

And if you're delaying that, if you're, if you're, if you're stopping that from happening, um, it does have a consequence. And just very recently, a cardiologist in the U S published a paper, which, which made the direct link between the, uh, heart disease and lack of sleep. And it was down to. uh, inflammation and the damage not being repaired.

So the remodeling not happening, is that it? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I think that's, it just goes back to that whole, just really understanding that when we do go to sleep, it's not just we're asleep. Our body is actually working really hard to go into remodeling and repair, right? Yeah. The brain, some areas of your brain are more active when you're asleep.

than they are when you're awake. You know, it's kind of like, it's, it's mad. I mean, like, you know, it's, it's the foundation for me. It's, it's not the few percent, it's the foundation that everything is built upon. So like, we know metabolically, um, you know, a profound impact on, on, on how your body will treat, food the next day, the following day, uh, psychologically, emotionally, and that there are those elements to, to sleep because if people come to me and they go, I want you to fix my sleep, you know, fix my sleep.

Nevermind the rest of my life. Just fix this. Sleep is like the thermometer. You know, it's almost like the thermometer and people want to bring the temperature down in the thermometer, but they don't want to actually cool the sauna, you know. Uh, and there's, there's, there's the physical or physiological element of sleep, you know, the melatonin and the sleep pressure and the mechanism of it, but there's the psychological element.

And there's a social element to sleep, you know, sleep with your partner. Do you not, you know, uh, there's cultural, there's, there's many facets to sleep that we just, it's not just a quick fix. It's a series of complex processes that come together and happen. And if we, if we learn to get that right, then we're going to, to benefit massively.

I mean, there's even a, one famous researcher who kind of tracked the amount of sleep we're getting with, with life expectancy. See. Yeah, yeah, like, yeah, and see, so see, let's see, one of the biggest issues that, um, people face going through menopause is sleep issues and then that has the knock on impact the next day at work, to brain fog, to your energy, um, et cetera.

If we just look at, you know, Where can someone start if they are struggling with their sleep and let's, let's, let's just park night sweats aside for a second, but just someone who, you know, just isn't getting a good night's sleep. Where can they start? So the road narrows for all of us as we age. Right, so I, we get worse at sleeping.

Don't know if I like that Tom. Well, we get, we get worse at sleeping. Um, as we age, we get worse at bloody everything. Right. So, um, the, there, as I said, there, there are many contributing factors which bring about a state of sleep now in our twenties or thirties, you can just go bang off sleep or you can survive off three hour sleep.

You know, you're 20, you're like, grand, fine, you know, no problem. Right. But as we get older, then things kind of change. Right. Um, so the tolerances, you know, uh, there's lower tolerance level or whatever. So we, we start with the body, the inputs to the body, right? So let's, let's kind of look at it because if we talk about all of the inputs, when it comes to health and sleep.

There's three things I talk about and they're, they're almost like, you know, um, what's the word I'm looking for? Um, they determine what we, what we get out. So if we look at the body, what are we doing with the body? What's the body designed for? It's not designed for sitting down all day looking at a, looking at a computer screen.

We are. We are. evolved, have evolved to move and push and pull and be hungry and be cold and challenge ourselves and use our bodies. And modern life is, is, is kind of going against that. We're not engaging with nature. We're not getting outside. We're sitting in temperature controlled environments with overhead lights all day.

We're not getting the signals. So the body, use the body for its intended purpose. The messaging systems I speak about, the nervous system. and the hormones. So the, the, the, we interact with the world. Um, we're overstimulating ourselves with stress, with, with on the phones. And, and, and so the, those systems are overstimulated and then the mind powerful, really powerful.

Now all three are connected. Um, so we look at the, the, the Trinity, they're, they're like a Trinity of governance. So let's start with the body. So to, to get better sleep, we need to be. primarily more active. I mean, I kind of said to people, look, come down, I'll fix your sleep. Come down to my garden and you can dig the garden all day long and you only come in to eat and, and, and when it's dark and then you'd have no problem sleeping.

No one's taken me up on the offer yet. Um, but you know, like we know those days we're outside, we're connected and that's because sunlight has a direct impact in many ways on our ability to achieve sleep. Serotonin. Uh, much higher serotonin level. Serotonin is a chemical required to make melatonin the sleep hormone.

And also at a cellular level, we have different forms of melatonin in the body. We have melatonin in our cells. And when we get direct sunlight, that cellular melatonin increases. The physical activity has been shown to reduce wake episodes, to improve sleep quality, and to reduce how long it takes us to get to sleep, sleep latency.

So use your body more, the first simple key message. Um, There are, as I said, there are about 20 different levers physically that we can, we can manipulate in some way to improve sleep. And sleep is about percentages, like whether it be light food, uh, vitamins and minerals, um, how you're using it. All, all of these things contribute one or 2%.

And we ju we don't need to get them all right, we just need a threshold. We need to hit that threshold that tips us into sleep. And we maybe then need to have, have a threshold that. Tries to keep us asleep if we get the conditions right for it. So physically, you know, uh, increase your physical activity levels and then winding down through, you know, during the day, watching the caffeine, obviously, you know, caffeine takes time to be eliminated.

So, you know, eight hours, like if I have a strong cup of coffee. 3 p. m. It's the equivalent of having half a strong cup of coffee at 11 p. m. So you wouldn't do that, but yet people consume coffee at 2, 3, 4 o'clock and they go, well, I don't have tea after six. It's too late. You know, you need to just reign it back.

So again, all of these contribute, uh, the emotional, Wind down is really important. Um, temperature is really important. Um, the environment, your sleep environment is really important, but like, let's look at one of the biggest things, cause you can get all these things right, but psychologically that's massive, isn't it?

Yeah, huge, huge. I talk about sleep confidence and that evaporates with people when they struggle because they don't know what's going on. Yeah. With menopause and with, you know. And I, I think then it becomes all of a sudden you're so, you're nearly afraid to turn the light off. Yeah. Because you're afraid to think, Oh God, I'm going to have another night where I won't sleep or I have to go up, get up, I have to go to the toilet and I'm going to wake up tomorrow.

And it's a bit like the hamster on the wheel. Yeah. And that's what happens. Um, people have very low sleep confidence. They start to get sleep anxiety. They start to project about, well, last night I didn't get, and tonight I have to, because I have a really busy day tomorrow. And so, and they're kind of caught in this window.

And what I say to people is, look, zoom out. You need to zoom out. You need to, the first message is this for people, right? Your sleep can improve. I can assure you of that. I've worked with people for 10 years. I've never. Ever had one person when, when, when they followed the correct things to do that, their sleep hasn't improved.

And I've had some really poor cases like people who've had poor sleep for decades. I'm talking about one or two hours a night for decades and I've improved their sleep. But what. What you have to kind of do Nury is, is, is like the growth mindset. You focus on the process and you zoom out. The results aren't up to you.

The more people focus on sleep, the more elusive it becomes. Yeah, totally. And I think, look, it's, it's, it's the one aspect of menopause I'd say daily. I get emails or messages from people struggling. Um, and I think that piece where you talked earlier, Tom, about the physical part of it. As CAVE people, like we're not meant to be sedentary and the sedentary nature of our lives, it's an additional stress, isn't it?

It is. You know, that compounds our ability to sleep and have good restorative sleep. It is because we kind of know if we've had a really active, busy day, you You know, physically doing things, like it's, it's just so good for us and it sends all the right messages to all the right places. And I love those days where I just arrive in bed and boom flop in the bed.

Gone. And you're just. Deep sleep, you know, fantastic, but of course life gets in the way, like we have the psychological stressors and we have the demands and we have the racing mind and they're, they're a result of how we're living, aren't they really? So the racing mind, the psychological, how can we support ourselves with that part of it?

So it's so common cause you have a few issues here. You have the racing mind, you have anxiety, um, you've stress. And those three are three separate things. Now you can, some people have all three of them. Some people have two out of the three. Like some people have a racing mind and they're not stressed out.

Say, look, I've no stress, Tom. Um, but my mind is just, you know, racing. What can I do? You know, and it's, it's the deactivation. So the prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain, which is kind of the governor, and that determines the inputs and it, it decides whether to act on impulse or not. So I'll give you an example.

When people drink alcohol, it kind of shuts down activity in the prefrontal cortex, right? And then the prefrontal cortex goes, I'll do whatever you want. So you can just say, say that very appropriate thing that has come into your head or react without thinking about it. It's fine. So that shuts down the prefrontal cortex.

That's why having alcohol, people go, I haven't, I have alcohol. If I've no problem falling asleep. But then their sleep is really poor. Yeah. Here's the caveat. Yeah. Right. Not a good solution. The caveat is it really impacts your sleep quality. Interferes with REM sleep. Not good. Right. So now the, the racing mind.

So that, that part of the brain looks after short term memory. Today, tomorrow. Oh God, tomorrow I have to do this. I have to do that. Um, and people don't realize this. And they, they arrive in bed in a very stressed out state. Right. Right. Wired maybe. Well, okay. Let's even remove the stress. They arrive in bed, they're busy and they have kids to pick up or they have a busy life, they're looking after a parent, they, you know, busy at work, whatever.

Now, when you're watching TV. You're giving your mind some chewing gum and you're fighting off sleep. You're watching something and you're struggling, then you go up to bed and then your mind will naturally gravitate towards worry or thinking about what I have to do tomorrow. So you must ramp down activity in that area of the brain.

And that's why we read children, uh, the story at night. So we, we must give ourselves some cognitive chewing gum. And that could be, uh, a breathwork. Um, a visualization. I like, I like to do visualizations of, so I like trekking. So I would imagine me going to the mountain with my backpack and, you know, seeing the trees, the sky, the color of the field, and just imagine, imagining that step by step by step by step.

And then the thoughts settle down. So here's the thing. No one is really going to train that racing mind. Only you, right? It's your responsibility to do that. And that takes time. That takes time because the mind will always go, Oh, what about this tomorrow? Yeah. You know, your mind, it's the most powerful thing.

Your mind will always try and, you know, I say to people like, you'd never go to the gym once and say, well, well, that didn't work or you'd never eat one meal and go, it's not working. So why would you think that meditation or visualization or that will work the first time you do it? It will take you some perseverance in, in, in trying it.

And I'm talking about weeks here. And again, with all of this stuff. What I found in my experience is that there is a delay. So you start doing the right things, even for a few days, you might not see the result, but you will see the result in a few weeks, in a few months, and that's. That's the level of zoom out you have to get with this stuff.

You know, you have to trust the process and your only response, responsibility is to apply the process. So the racing mind, the worry, we're hardwired to worry. Part of the reason we're so successful as a species is we have this capacity to look into the future and predict danger. So worrying has served us well.

So, you know, it's, it's normal to, to some degree. Yeah. Anxiety, the same thing, you know, we all have anxiety, uh, but there are learnable skills that we can apply each evening. Like here's a good one for you. So, uh, 10 minutes each night, a journal, and you ask yourself one simple question. And this is from Dr.

Paul Koik. He's, he done this with 300, 000 people. But that's a huge sample size and the results were that anxiety levels dropped in three weeks. Quick, quick. What did he do? Yes. So you ask yourself one question. What did I do today that was good for me? That I'm grateful for? What did I do today that was good for me?

That was beneficial for me. It was good for me. And at the beginning, you start to write down, you know, I had an extra glass of water. I had a piece of fruit. I done this. But then you start to get deeper, a little bit deeper and deeper and deeper. And you get that sense of gratitude. And, um, this question repeatedly asked will, will, will bring up some really interesting stuff for you.

And your anxiety levels magically drop. I love that piece about, You know, that visualization and the question, but I can just, I can totally imagine, even as you were saying it there, cause like you, you know, I love hiking and up the mountains, but I could just imagine it straight away. The trees, you know, all of that, the sounds, everything.

And it is that calming. that racing mind, right? And even for, so very, very common with, um, uh, in menopause for many women is that they might fall asleep really quick because they're shattered, exhausted, but they'll wake up two or three o'clock in the morning because that racing mind is going. So that's where you could, if you can just find, what's that nice visualization for you that you can drop into.

To get you back to sleep. Yeah, because we, we know this, right? That if you go to bed wired and tired, and exhaustion will, will put you to sleep, that unless you have deactivated the other systems from a subconscious point of view, your mind will wake you up. three or four hours there, your mind will wake up and go, Oh, what about this?

We haven't dealt with this. So even to, to start telling yourself, Oh, you have done everything I've needed to do. Everything is a famous, famous line from I think Anthony deMello. Um, everything is exactly as it should be. You know, I think that's so beautiful. Like that, that you've done your You've done everything, because sleep is about letting go, letting go of what I need to get done, what I didn't get done, what I have to do tomorrow, what I, you know, what she said to me.

And that's hard, Tom, like when you find like for a lot of women in menopause, and perimenopause, postmenopause, even you are juggling. Um, my cousin recently said to me, the struggle of the juggle. And it is that because it could be, you know, children, aging parents, you've got work life. That's a lot. And then you have menopause on top of that and symptoms if you're being challenged with them.

So I think there's also kind of, we've got to, if we can just let it be okay, just let it be okay that maybe we didn't get everything done. Yeah. You know, there's things that can carry over until tomorrow. And just like you say, sleep is about letting go. And I think as women, we can be really hard on ourselves.

I think so. I think you, you know, you do. Take more of that responsibility of thinking with that. Well, I have to, like, we have to make sure now the kids are like, make sure that my mother is to make sure like that, that nurturing female side is a lot more drawn to, to, to, to gravitate towards that level of thinking, you know, but we have to be able to switch that off, like, like helping everyone and anyone that I have over the years about sleep.

Like in a, in a lot of cases, it's, it's really about moving things out of the way, settling things down and the sleep comes then. The sleep comes if we just settle everything down. It's like the child. It's like you, you imagine the cranky child and you know, you, you create the environment, you settle them down emotionally and mentally and that's a lifelong battle of, of, of being able to do that.

Whether it be the mind or the nervous system. It's, you know, they're very much connected as well. So it's, it's about being able to switch off and settle down and give yourself that reassurance. And on that talk about, cause you know, we've looked at kind of the calming part there, you know, with stress, raising mind, et cetera.

We'll just talk a little bit about the technology part of it, because I know myself, um, I would be very good, you know, if I finished Netflix, whatever you're watching, you have a bit of time. I'd read a book before the light goes out. Um, I know there's been a couple of nights where one of the kids will say something to me and all of a sudden I need the phone for whatever reason.

And if you end up. You hop onto something and all of a sudden, all of a sudden you're back where you started two, three hours ago. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, look, um, we have to be on social media for our work and you get sucked, you can get sucked down a rabbit hole. It's, so here's the, here's the thing with the, with the technology.

We know about the light. Everyone knows that, right? So let's talk about the addictive nature of it and why it's so hard to get off. And what it's, what's actually happening is it's hijacking the most powerful reward pathway in human evolution. The same chemical that you get excited about going on holiday, the Friday feeling, this delicious three course lunch that you're about to have, money, financial security, sex, all of those things are driven by one fuel in your brain.

That's dopamine. And your phone, the apps on your phone operate. Of something called dopamine error reward, meaning that you flick the next thing, it might be something that you like, Oh, that's, Oh, that's amazing, really good. And then it dies away. And then you continue flicking through social media and app companies, it's fun app companies have paid hundreds of millions to neuroscientists to make.

your tech as tap into these reward pathways, you know, so, so they're exceptionally powerful. And don't mistake distraction for relaxation. Yeah. People, the amount of people who say, I'm relaxing, I'm sitting on the couch scrolling, or I'm lying in beds, that's comfort and distraction. It's not, because if I do a relaxation exercise with you, That's relaxation because then the mind simmers down, the nervous system simmers down, the body simmers down.

Uh, but if you're, if you're distracting, cause we know that usually with dopamine, dopamine is required to make adrenaline. So you get the exciting thought, Oh, I'll do this. And then you get the adrenaline to actually go and do it. So it's like a precursor to adrenaline. And usually with, um, dopamine, we get some cortisol as well, the stress hormone.

So we know that you're, yeah, you're stimulating yourself. You're stimulating by being on the, on the technology. Now, if you're listening to a podcast, that's good. I'm happy with no problem. Brilliant. Great way to switch off. Or relaxing music or sounds or whatever it may be. But if you're doing the Tom exercises, you're scrolling, you know, if you're doing those Tom exercises, um, then you're in trouble because you're very hard to get off.

Time is even distorted. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I think it's, look, we can, it's the one thing that, you know, I have noticed it like on those few evenings where I, cause I'm, my phone goes to bedtime mode, 9 30, it automatically switches and that's it. But where I've had to open it up again for whatever reason, uh, it's just like, Oh my God.

And I can feel it. I'm like, my brain's waking up and I'm like, Oh, trying to get it done. Like get off it quick. You know, so, and I'm really, I can really notice it now that I'll notice I might've been in a very calm and very tired state. Yeah. All of a sudden I could be on the phone for five, 10 minutes and I'm like, okay, I'm awake here again.

You know? So I think it, yeah, I, I just, I, it's one area that I just wanted to make sure we touched on because I think, um, it's very powerful in terms of the impact that it has, you know, We mentioned earlier, Tom, about the hormones and ones. That again, play a huge feature when it comes to menopause. So you've had, you haven't had a good night's sleep, you go into work the next day, the brain fog is heightened, your decision making is impacted because of menopause, because of lack of sleep, et cetera, but also your food choices can be different, right?

Oh yeah. Yeah, your food choices will be informed and driven a lot by, by different hormones. So we look at like, you know, cortisol levels. If you've high cortisol, your body is going to crave, you've low energy and high cortisol. So your body's going to crave sugar and high fat foods, high energy foods that, that give you instant reward.

Um, and you know, that they're, they're powerful. Um, and you know, again, that even ties in to dopamine because you get, you get a spike of dopamine when you eat those crappy foods. And it's why you can rush for the, you know, the cup of coffee again and again to try and perk yourself up and, you know. Well, the advice is if you've had a poor night's sleep is to not do anything differently.

Stick to your good habits, stick to your normal routines. Don't go to bed earlier that night. Do all and your brain will, will, will do the catching up for you. I would say the caveat for that was just manage your energy. Like, you know, the next day and stop thinking ahead, get through the next hour, the next two hours, don't catastrophize, don't catastrophize.

It starts getting into you. Oh God, I've got all this to do. But nobody can cope with that. Right. So you just. Manage your energy, be gentle with yourself and know, okay, I might not be 100 percent of this. So I'm just going to take it easy a little bit. And you know what? The closer you get to the end of the day, the better you feel and you're fine.

You're actually okay. Your head won't fall off in one more night's sleep, you know. Yeah. We were, we were in a town, um, on Sunday, uh, just the family and, uh, we were going home and we, We're out for lunch or whatever. And we got home and I don't know, it was around five or whatever. And I thought, Oh God, I could just so lie down, have a little nap, just for like 20 minutes.

And I was like, no, no, no. I'll just push through this one. Cause then I knew when, you know, I go to bed later, I'll sleep like a log. Yes. Um, but sorry, I digress there. But going, going back, so one of the things, um, I believe, and because this has worked for me when I was looking at weight management and I was very much about, okay, I'm going to tackle this very slowly and very steady and wasn't going for anything.

Just want to see how it could work. Cause as we get older, it becomes more challenging to manage weight. Right. And there's a change in weight distribution as well. One of the most powerful. Steps I found Tom was that I stopped snacking at nighttime, so I'd have my last kind of bit of food maybe around seven o'clock and then I wouldn't have anything else till you know, maybe eight o'clock the next morning or whatever.

Whenever I was having food. Um, breakfast. And what I found then it was, I kind of looked at it. Well, I'm helping my body have more time to repair because, you know, I'm not loading it up with more food just before you go to bed. And work. And work. Yeah, exactly. Because then it's going to have to work harder.

Right? Oh, absolutely. So, You know, I mean, these little, if we think about sort of, you know, going back over evolution and stuff like that, like we, we didn't have food available every second. We went through periods of hours and days sometimes where we had, we had starvation or micro starvation or whatever you want to call it, fasting or whatever.

And that's really good for us actually. Hermesis, a little bit of stress, what, what, what doesn't kill you will make you stronger. That's the kind of basis of it. Now, what you're doing is if you're not. Eating for that period of time, your insulin sensitivity will be much better. So then when you do take on energy, it will be sucked up by your muscles, it won't be stored as fat.

Um, a lack of sleep will have an impact on your body composition. Several different kind of ways. So if you've elevated cortisol, the next energy that your body gets will be, it's more likely to be stored away as fat. You have ghrelin, which controls hunger and your leptin, um, which tells you to stop eating.

Both of those will be all over the place increased. So your body will be asking you for more calories and it won't have the off switch to tell you to stop eating. Um, so you know, really, really powerful. And here's the thing, you entrain the systems within your body to cope with that and to do that. Now at night, your, your, your gut biome, your digestive system needs a break.

And certain bacteria multiply and proliferate to clean up your digestive system while you're sleeping. And that makes it function much better the next day. Um, so there's like, there are many different mechanisms. That work from a metabolism, from a body composition point of view that will, will really, really benefit that.

Because if you're stressed out and not getting enough sleep, the body will just store fat around the abdomen area. And as you say, it changes like sleep apnea, snoring, women catch up in menopause because the distribution of fat changes. They get more fat in the neck and they, they, they catch up on men when it comes to snoring.

Um, and, and again, with sleep apnea, things like that. So things, things do change hormonally and that has an impact. So what we want to try and do is work with the body, work with your body clock and your circadian rhythm and things like that to try and help ourselves. And having a window where you're not eating is, is, is really beneficial.

There's a lot of new science out there saying it actually turns on the longevity. genes. If you look at Dr. David Sinclair and people like that are doing a lot of really interesting work in things like, you know, um, a restricted eating window. And I think I'm personally, I'm not a fan of intermittent fasting.

Um, the, you know, the, the, the standard, but I do believe in the fasting overnight. Cause I, I just know, like if you eat late, we all know you just do your sleep's not the same the next morning. It's not the same. It will disrupt sleep. Certainly. Certainly. We need, we need that time. We need the digestive, all the systems need the time to, to repair and to downregulate or whatever.

Yeah. I know we haven't gone into detail in terms of, you know, for that person, for, you know, for the woman who's struggling with night sweats, um, but you know, everything we've talked about covers that. But Tom, when I was researching and writing my book, All You Need to Know About Menopause, you gave me a great tip to include in relation to night sweats.

So do you want to just talk us about that? The ice cube tip? The um, the bottle in the freezer with the face cloth. Yeah. Because we, we have, we have. Beside the bed. Beside the bed. Yeah. So we have, we have specific regions of the body where there are heat exchange areas in the body where there's no hair. Uh, the palms, I hope, the palms of your hands, the soles of your feet and your kind of forehead around your eyes.

So these are special areas where we can, we can, um, influence, um, body temperature profoundly. A lot of really interesting work going on here, but the fastest way to cool down or heat up is to heat or cool these areas. So I would pop a bottle into the freezer a few hours before bed and then take it out and wrap a face cloth in it and just have it.

By the bedside, if you do wake up, because temperature is, is something that will wake anyone up. If, if, if there's heat build up in the bed, um, you know, that will wake you up. Uh, so if you do wake up, you can grab the face cloth, put it on your forehead, put it on your, your, your hands for a few seconds. That will cool your core cooling and throw the bed sheets off and get cold.

Cause temperature will, will prompt the brain to produce the pineal gland to produce more melatonin, put you back to sleep. Like, I don't want, like, I don't want people stressing that they're waking up. I don't want people stressing out that, Oh, I wake up at the same time and I knew, and I get, you know, that's, that's, that's actually normal to some degree.

Hmm. It's, it's to be expected. It's to train yourself to go back to sleep quickly. And the key to that is to not focus on sleep and to focus on relaxation and routine, those little things. Yeah, and I think there where you're saying because what happens when you get the night sweat, you're roasted, you get your face clothed, you cool yourself down and you do throw off the blankets, you do get cool again.

And that nearly in a way is that's nearly the body trying to help you get back to sleep, isn't it? Yes. You know, cause you end up, you'll throw them off, you'll have them back on again, you'll throw them off again, back on. I mean, that's the way it can go. But, you know, again, I, I, I do think with the night sweats too, depending on the severity, if you can go back to, as you were saying, you know, the, those little exercises for the racing mind can support there to calm everything down.

Yeah. And you, like, you find what works for you. Those little things are little tips that you can do and you will find what works for you. It doesn't mean that it will always and forever work for you as well. You might have to, that's. That's a very important one. Yeah. Cause like initially maybe. A podcast or a visualization might, you might get good results with that, but again, don't overthink it, don't overanalyze it.

Don't, you know, it's kind of like be patient with it and just implement and implement and practice and you'll, you will find that and then like the odd night. The odd night you will struggle and a normal person who doesn't have menopause and there are some nights where they just will wake up and not get back to sleep and that's, that's okay too, you know.

I think it's being fluid with it and that goes for anything in menopause. You have to be fluid with it because it's constantly changing. You could have one symptom which could be replaced by something else down the line. Tom, thanks so much. We covered loads as always, but any final remaining questions?

tip you'd like to give everyone? I just, I just like to give people hope really, honestly, cause I've worked with a lot of perimenopausal and menopausal women who were going through a lot with it. And I know like the words that come to mind are despair. You know, when you miss out on sleep and you're just desperate, like desperation and despair, oh please, you know, there is, there is help.

There are things that you can do. You just have to. Implement, be gentle with yourself and you will build something that works for you and you will start to get sleep confidence back. At least if you do the things, you know that sometimes in life you get thrown, but if you revert back to your set of tools and practices.

That, that will work if you give it a couple of weeks and you will, you will get over it. You will get through it. Thanks Tom. That was great as always. My pleasure. Thank you very much, Catherine, for having me. Thank you for listening to Menopause Uprising with me, your host, Catherine O'Keeffe. I really hope you enjoyed this week's episode.