The Sleep Episode with Brian Samson

Today on the Menopause Uprising Podcast we have Brian Samson, head of Health Promotion at ESB. We are talking about sleep and menopause and how it can affect our lives. We delve into the fascinating world of sleep science. In this episode, we unravel the mysteries of sleep, exploring its importance, mechanisms, and practical tips for achieving a restful night's sleep.

Transcript -Automatically Generated

Today I'm joined with Brian Sampson, head of health promotion at ESB as part of ESB's menopause inclusivity program, which I'm thrilled to partner with ESB on. And today we're going to talk about a shared passion of Brian and myself, which is sleep and sleep and menopause. So welcome Brian. Thank you, Catherine.

So tell us, I know when we met when we were doing menopause champion training, we had a great discussion around sleep. We did. So what, where has your interest come in relation to sleep and why? Yeah, I, I guess it's come from being a poor sleeper for, I suppose, the guts of almost 50 years. Um, in 2019, I started to experience what I now know to be brain fog.

Um, it came completely out of the blue. And Quite debilitating at times where you're forgetting words or we're in a conversation here. Now it gets stuck gets stuck on a word um, and then Late 2019. I heard dr Matthew walker speak on a podcast called drive, uh from peter at it's one They would kind of listen to religiously and I I heard him speak about sleep in a way that i've never heard anyone speak about sleep before I became interested immediately because he started talking about symptoms of kind of long term chronic poor sleep and one of those was brain fog.

So it twigged straight away with me. So I bought his book. Um, I read his book. His book is terrifying. If you're a poor sleeper, it really is terrifying. It's quite controversial. Um, but it was enough for me to say, okay, I need to do something about my sleep. And I kind of kickstarted my journey into better sleep.

And I've continued to evolve that over the last two to three years. And when I say I was a poor sleeper, um, you know, I can remember certainly from my late teens onwards, just being a really poor sleeper and being kind of unique in my family. I have three younger brothers who, and I often say if sleeping was an Olympic sport, they would be gold, gold medal winners for Ireland.

They had just had this ability to put their head in the pillow and sleep through the night and at weekends, sleep on through, you know, into early afternoon. And I was the jealous and very, very, the very opposite of that. I would go to bed. Would wake up two or three times, always awake early, and I think sometime, sometime probably in my 30s, I just kind of accepted, you know, I'm just a bad sleeper and just, just get on with it.

I could function, I could work, I could play sports, I could get on with it. The only thing I, I, I can remember kind of, I guess, suffering, which was kind of this overwhelming urge sometimes in the afternoon to, you know, want to nap or want to sleep. Um, I now know that was probably down to, You know, poor sleep, where I used to put it down to kind of this mid afternoon kind of urge is slump.

Um, but definitely that was down to just, I guess, long term poor sleep. So that's really what kick started when I heard Matthew Walker speak about sleep. It was my first time I heard anyone speak about sleep, the importance of it and the long term impacts of it. And, you know, I've always been into health and well being, but sleep is something that I've just completely disregarded for pretty much all my life until that, until that point.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's mad, isn't it? Because we kind of, we don't really Think about sleep and we don't kind of realize how important sleep is. And I think for me, you know, when it comes to menopause, I always say, you know, it's the bedrock of thriving through menopause, because if you get sleep, right, it has, it has a domino impact on so many of the symptoms.

And you mentioned yourself, Brian, like brain fog, which we know is one of the most challenging. Symptoms of menopause, particularly in the workplace. So if you can start looking at your sleep and the quality of your sleep, that's certainly it can be a real game changer. And Matthew Walker, I mean, he's like he's like the father of sleep, isn't he?

He is. Yeah, yeah, he is. And I think, um, Satchin Panda, Dr. Satchin Panda is someone else that I, that I followed quite a bit and they're very similar in terms of their beliefs around sleep and so forth. But I, I think when we look at the impact it has, if we look at the working day, You know, that brain fog, it just doesn't leave you.

No, it doesn't. It doesn't. And it can be debilitating, like really debilitating. And I found it, you know, and I remember clearly it was quite early in 2019. I didn't know what this was because, you know, I guess some of the symptoms of brain fog, you may relate it to things like dementia or Alzheimer's, this kind of forgetfulness.

Um, but you know, when I got my sleep right and I was consistent with it, that brain fog disappeared and thankfully it stayed away. Yeah. And when you mentioned there, Brian, about dementia and Alzheimer's, uh, we know that sleep is one of the key foundations for prevention when it comes to Alzheimer's. And because obviously the long term impact on the brain from sleep deprivation.

So that's why I guess for me, I'm so keen on, you know, really trying to put everything, invest everything, um, We can into a good night's sleep because we can reap the benefits. So to talk about a good night's sleep. So how does sleep look for you now, since you've kind of, you know, taken a different awareness to it?

Yeah. So I've had to do, I guess, a lot of very practical things to get my sleep right. But what I found out very quickly was I was doing a lot of things wrong. Uh, I'm taking a lot of things for granted. So a good night's sleep for me now starts. Pretty much on the morning I wake up. So it's, it's getting out and getting sunlight as early as possible.

And that actually, Catherine, is something I've only really started doing in the last couple of weeks. So I have a morning routine that I like to do, but it involves very much doing things that are indoor. Um, as I said, I told you earlier on that I'm still kind of continually evolving my kind of knowledge and practice around getting a good night of sleep.

And this is something that I guess I had omitted from it. So. Early morning. Uh, so I tend to get up between six 30, seven 30, um, about a half an hour after getting up, I'm, I'm out, I go for a walk now. So I do some breath work practice, but it's really getting outside and getting that daylight, getting as much daylight as I can early in the morning, and that just kind of resets my sick, my sleep wake cycle very early in the morning, and it really allows me to have that evening time to be get tired pretty much around the same time.

So it's that consistency of. Wake up and going to bedtime has been a, a huge factor in me improving my sleep, but also the kind of the, the controls I have around light, plenty of light early in the morning, and then kind of dimming down lights at home in the evening time as well, uh, which is really very, very important, especially if, again, if you're someone like me, very, very sensitive to bright lights.

Yeah. And just when you mentioned there about the, the sleep times, like, you know, for any of us that have had children. What was the most important thing when they were babies was sleep and the routine we had them in like humans love routine. Our bodies love that circadian rhythm of knowing, okay, I go to bed at whatever, nine, 10, 11 o'clock.

I get up at six, seven and our bodies thrive on that. And I think what you're saying there in relation to light is so important because it immediately gives us that trigger. Increased cortisol and we, you know, the melatonin production, which is the sleep inducing hormone goes back into the background.

And that is why, like, you know, so many of the sleep experts will say about getting out into the fresh air and particularly now we're coming into lovely weather, it's easier, right? It is absolutely, yeah, totally. It's a pleasure to go out in the morning, say, yeah, absolutely. As a, maybe not, not so much maybe in December or January, but now, yeah, yeah.

It's a great excuse to get out in the morning and, you know, and it's not just the, the resetting of the sleep wake cycle. It's, it's the physical impact as well, better mood. Uh, you're also getting some exercise in early in the morning as well. So it's got a lot of benefits. Yeah. And I think it was, um, Dr.

Satchin Panda who actually, he said, sleep is the beginning of our biological day. It's not the end. Yeah. So like you were saying, you start in the morning. Yeah. That is where it starts and then you progress through the day. Have you, you're, you know, You're kind of not so much your daytime, but your evening routine, then is that different?

Uh, well, very different what it was before I listened to Dr. Matthew Walker. It was pretty much, I guess, last hour or two hours, I might be watching TV with lights on. Um, I guess it's just the way I was brought up as a kid. That's the way we kind of relaxed in the evening. And I just carried on that. Um, Um, or it might be using a computer or, or, or a phone, for example.

Uh, and what I've learned since then is just the, the impact that light in particular, and in particular blue light can have, uh, on our sleep, our ability to get asleep, to stay asleep. You mentioned melatonin, how it can kind of disrupt the body's natural and production of melatonin as well. So it's been a huge education for me.

It's meant a lot of changes at nighttime. So when I was living alone, it was very, very difficult. Far each control my, uh, exposure to, to nighttime light. But when you're living as part of a family with kids and a partner, it's a little, it's a little harder, but you know, there are, we've had workarounds and we use special bulbs at nighttime now as well.

Sometimes I use blue light blocking glasses depending on what I'm doing, but very much an evening routine for me, I guess I'm generally in bed about 10 30. That seems to be the sweet spot for me. So. 10. 30, 11 o'clock. No later than 11 o'clock. That's the sweet spot for me. I generally get up there between 6.

30 and 7. 00 generally. Um, my routine would be dimming lights probably somewhere two hours before bedtime. Last meal, no more than three hours before bedtime. Maybe a little bit more. For if, if I had a push, um, and then I do some kind of light kind of physical work as well, it could be stretching and it might be some yoga, definitely some breath work, I use, um, some breath work routines from Oxygen Advantage, Patrick McKeown, he's just.

Release of no affiliation, brilliant app, and it's completely free. No subscription, all his bread work routines are there as well. And he's very good around sleep as well. So I use some of his protocols at nighttime and then I read and then generally 10 30, I have just good as overwhelming or it's just, just a sleep.

So that those little things have been huge. Um, but really the thing that I always do at night time is just try as best I can just control my exposure to white light and blue light in particular at night time and especially overhead bulbs. I find that I'm really, really sensitive to them, whereas lamps, not too bad, but that bright overhead light really does disrupt my sleep at night time.

Makes it very hard. It makes it harder for me to go to sleep and then I tend to have more disrupted sleep at night time if I'm exposed to overhead light. Yeah, the light is Just massive, isn't it? When it comes to sleep, I, um, spent some time with my sister in Vancouver last summer, and she has installed, um, in the downstairs rooms, the kitchen, the living room, she has installed separate lights for the evening time so that, because she is like you, like me, obsessed with sleep.

So the impact of certain lights can just really, as we were saying earlier, it Tells the body to start producing cortisol because it's wakening the brain up. Whereas what we actually want to be doing is we want to calm the brain down and get it ready so that it knows, okay, get ready for bedtime and triggers into that.

Like you say, you read your book and then all of a sudden the overwhelming urge to sleep and that's your melatonin has completely kicked in. It's like that sleep pressure that builds during the day. And then it's like, okay. Brian, you have to sleep now. So it is very important to downregulate world we live in as well, where there's a lot of stress in our lives at the moment, whether it's financial stress, family stress, work stress, just having a, just setting aside some time in the evening to do some sort of practice, it just helps the central nervous system downregulation, prepare for bed.

Very, very important. Yeah. And just one part you touched on there, which is really. really important, particularly when we come to menopause, when we start looking at weight distribution and weight changes, which can be really common. One of the key parts there is. It's not just about what we're eating, but it's also about when we're eating.

And that ties in, as you said, giving yourself that three hour, three to four hour gap before you go to sleep is so important. Now, uh, I'm not a fan of intermittent fasting, but I am a fan of fasting overnight. So for example, I started to really work on this since probably February, where I was trying to reduce my weight.

But the very first step I took was I made sure that I didn't eat anything after seven o'clock at night. So I didn't eat after 7pm and I didn't then have breakfast until about 7. 30, 8am the next day. So it meant I was getting over 12 hours of fasting. We know that anything over 12 hours of fasting, your body starts to kick into using the fat reserves that are in the body.

So, you know when you wake up and you hear that rumble in your tummy? That's actually really positive because that means as soon as you get that rumble, it means that your body now, it has no immediate fuel food in the body to work from, so it starts pulling from the fat stores and that's what you want when we're looking at it for someone who's looking at managing weight.

So one of the key things there is, you know, the nighttime snacking. Which we can all fall into different times, but it's one key step. I did that as the very first step and within, I think about two to three weeks, I lost four kg by making that one change only. I didn't change anything. I was eating during the day at that stage.

I just made sure that I wasn't eating any food past seven o'clock. Yeah. And the body then. It goes into this beautiful repair, restore mode when you go to sleep, because say, for example, like if you eat last, let's say half six, seven, your food will be, should be fully digested three hours later. So then your body has all that lovely sleep time.

to repair, right? And that's hugely advantageous when it comes to weight management, which, as I know, can be challenging for many people. Absolutely, and, uh, you know, I've kind of dipped in and out of intermittent fasting over the past couple of years, uh, kind of changed my protocol around fasting. Um, in a big way, uh, of late, I, Would have done quite a bit of intermission fasting and I still do, but I've, I've just changed it a little bit, but I suppose another aspect that's kind of worth talking about when it comes to weight management and sleep is that how important sleep is getting a good night of sleep is to kind of prepare you and how you eat the next day, because we do know that where, you know, where you've got even one night of poor, of poor sleep can, and you wake up, you've already got elevated blood glucose levels.

Okay. And unfortunately, you want to eat, unfortunately, when you have that urge, it's not going to be the good stuff, it's going to be highly processed food, it's going to be sugar laden food, and then you immediately end up on this kind of blood sugar roller coaster all day, and it messes up with your, your heart, the leptin and ghrelin, those hunger and appetite.

It's a satiety hormones. So leptin and decreases your appetite. Ghrelin increases. So one night of bad sleep. Ghrelin becomes dominant and you just want to eat all the time and, you know, you end up saying this blood sugar roller coaster, you know, type two diabetes huge huge issue in society. You know, Kids, pre teenage kids presenting with type 2 diabetes now.

So in terms of weight management, you know, sleep again, it's foundational to ensuring that, you know, the next day that I suppose you're in good shape in terms of how you want to eat. Yeah, and as you said, your food choices. are much healthier when you've had a good night's sleep, because, you know, we've all been there and you do go for the quick fix.

And I think that's why it's so important to really understand that when our body shuts down for sleep, there is so much going on in the background. Our cells are being repaired. It's like, I always kind of say, it's like, you know, if you think about it, it's like the cleaner comes in. You, you. Put the body falls asleep and it's like now the cleaners like gets all excited.

I'm going to clean out the body. I'm going to store the memories that I want to store. And that has huge benefits to our long term health. And one of the aspects that I see that can be quite challenging for many people is in relation to the liver at nighttime. Because the liver loves that deep cleanse that the opportunity gets at night time, but I often find, you know, when it comes to alcohol, everything in moderation is really important because we know that you might have a couple of glasses of wine or spirits, whatever it is.

And the body then goes to sleep and the liver is getting all excited about doing its repair. But now it's like, Oh, hang on. I've now got to do my repair, but now I've also got to process this additional alcohol, which puts a toll on the liver. And that's one aspect that I find really impedes sleep because You know, many people would say to me, Oh, but I fall asleep great, but you will fall asleep great, but the chances are you will wake up and the chances are you'll be dehydrated and all of that will impact the quality of your sleep.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's, it's one of the things that I, I would have always believed if anyone asked me a question before I listened to Dr. Matthew Walker, like, why do we sleep? I would have said, well, it's for rest and recovery. So you feel well, but actually, as you say, to sleep. So much going on in the body.

Uh, and for anyone who won, I guess, wanted more evidence of that, maybe look at some of the research that's out there around the impact that sleep and circadian disruption has, has, has a night shift workers, for example, on the implications that night shift work has on under potentially it has under health, you know, it, it doesn't know organs or no systems are left out brain, cardiovascular system, respiratory system are all impacted by long term circadian and sleep disruption.

Yeah. And just when you mentioned that about the organs, when we look at the body, if you think of the body like a house, so every organ has its own room. So like, so every organ has its own time to wake up, to shut up shop, et cetera. So if we think about the bedroom, ideally it's, it's far asleep. We think about the kitchen, it's for eating.

So, it's the same when we look at the organs in the body and they've all got these little clocks that they work off of. And our bodies just love rhythm. They thrive on it. So, when we do something to disrupt that, Our bodies just get hacked off with us and it takes us a good bit of time to recover. So like, you know, jet lag, or even if you, you know, miss one night's sleep, we know that it's not the next day.

It takes a couple of days for you to recover from that. So I think understanding the impact on all aspects of our bodies is so important because like I mentioned the liver, but also say long term. From the cognitive perspective. And if we look at illnesses like dementia and Alzheimer's, we know that sleep has a very, very important role to play.

And I guess that's why I think, you know, putting the time and thought into a good, good sleep habits like you've built over the years is so important that can, that is just looking back at, you know, what are your evening routines? Like when do you eat last? When do you reduce technology? And. One of the things, unfortunately, again, that I would see a lot is, you know, where people can be in bed and they might be scrolling through social media, media or something, and all of a sudden all this cortisol starts bumping up in the system.

You know, if my partners listen to this now, she'll, she'll know you're probably talking about her or something, the demon for that, but absolutely, you know, and it's not just the exposure to light. The cortisol, it's, it's, it's the reaction to seeing something as well. It, it kind of increases that brain alertness, which is not what you want when you're trying to go to sleep.

Yeah. So I think it's kind of investing the time is really important. And another thing just to mention. So when we look at it from what's the great disruptor for women who are going through menopause, well, sleep itself, if you're not getting sleep, which impacts brain fog. But another aspect of that is going to be night sweats.

And for someone who is experiencing night sweats, that can be really challenging to your sleep. And again, I, you have to come back on that. You have to peel it back and you have to kind of look at, well, Potentially, what are my triggers? So one very big trigger there is caffeine. As I know, you've heard me talk about before.

And I, caffeine is encouraging the body to produce cortisol and it's great. We, we love the cup of tea or coffee in the morning, but certainly if you are having sleep issues, I would really encourage you to reduce or not to have caffeine after say one o'clock. And remember too, it's not just coffee, it's tea, it's fizzy drinks, foods with caffeine, because that will.

Impact your sleep quality, you know, and the other thing is, is Temperature. So if we look at temperature, your core body temperature wants to be low, right? Doesn't it? That's why we say a cold room. Not a cold room, but a, you know, well ventilated room. Exactly. Yeah. And I guess, yeah, a cool room as well. And, um, that is one of the things that became very evident as well after, you know, like Started to learn more about sleep is the impact that just at room temperature can happen or sleep and that our body a core body temperature needs to drop one or two degrees before sleep.

So, you know, having a hot shower kind of provoke that to happen as well. You have a hot shower, your body starts to cool down, but definitely having a well ventilated room is very, very important. It's one of the things I try to, um, to do. But again, you know, it can be challenging when you're sharing a bedroom.

Somebody likes to be very warm and I'm trying to be the opposite, very cool. So again, it's, it's, it's trying to find a balance, but it is, it is very, very important as I say, someone who, uh, might be experiencing night sweats as well, um, that can be very, very challenging, but I think having a well ventilated room could probably help a little bit that as well.

Yeah, for sure. And that challenge with the different temperatures is very real. I was talking to a woman recently and she was telling me that, uh, her husband sleeps in a tracksuit because she has all the windows open because she's struggling with these, you know, so there's those, and that's why often too, from a partner's perspective, you might often feel that, you know, your partner, if she's going through menopause, We'll go to the spare room because they're very conscious.

They don't want to disturb your sleep, but they're also conscious that maybe they need lower temperature. And one of the great things there, when you mentioned about the core temperature is a warm shower before bed, because it means it, the, the heat goes to the skin, the blood flow moves to the skin, and that can be really good to reduce the core temperature and it's the core temperature that we get you.

Um, so often, you know, uh, you know, a nice shower before bed can be beneficial, can help, but certainly the other thing I would say for anyone who does have night sweats. What I find, um, Brian, one thing is your, your bed linen is really important, but one part that women often don't think about is the mattress protector.

So sometimes the ingredients in a mattress protector can also actually trigger, um, or can exasperate the hot flushes. So you can work back through your day and kind of look at what's triggering, you know, reduce your caffeine, make sure you're drinking a good amount of water. It's a big one when it comes to night sweats and hot flushes as well.

But we know that, um, there is a, there is that link between stress and many of the symptoms of menopause, but certainly, um, night sweats would be one, but looking at your bed linen is really important. And then it's actually looking at, you know, what you're wearing. To bed, you know, making sure that it's cotton bamboo is another option as well.

And it's just kind of having, having little steps in place that if you do, because for many women, it can be drenching night sweats. So you just want to make sure you have spare PJs by the bed or another great tip that, um, Tom Coleman gave me a couple of years ago was have a bowl of water beside the bed with ice cubes and have a little, um, Face clothing.

Oh, that's a great idea. So that then you could just put that on your forehead, on the back of your neck or something like that. And again, it can just help reduce the temperature because what happens for some women, they may have a night sweat and they mightn't even wake up because it mightn't be too intense, but for others you can wake up and that's where that sleep disturbance can come into play.

To play. So what you want to do is you want to kind of, yes, if you wake up, just get yourself back to sleep as quick as you can. So make it easy, have the spare pajamas or nightdress by the bed, you know, go to the bathroom if you need to try and stick away, stay away from, you know, turning on the phone, keep, you know, lights to a minimum, like you say, you know, small lights that aren't going to kick off that cortisol again are really important.

You know, the other thing, actually, uh, you, you mentioned there the possibility of, of, uh, sleeping in, in different rooms and obviously you, you may have been reading about this great debate about the sleep divorce, whether it's a good, a good idea or not. And there's obviously pros and cons around that as well.

Um, but just to extend the, The discussion around light and one of the things as well that is obviously very important is to make your room as dark as dark as possible. Um, and that is one thing I guess is possibly. The most beneficial thing I think I've probably done, um, because what it means is I found it easier to get asleep, but when I wake up and I still wake up, you know, a lot of time, um, you know, probably once a night I'd wake up, but having A very darkened room just makes it so much easier to go back asleep because there is research and very recently published papers around the impact that a poorly, sorry, yeah, poorly darkened room.

So a room, a bedroom, that's still letting some light in, even if it's as low as a hundred lux and a hundred lux would be, you know, not, not bright enough for you to be able to read, but certainly be able to find your way around the room. Um, the impact that has on your sleep in terms of. We disrupting your sleep or waking you up early, but also just on the impact of the cardiovascular system, higher blood pressure, higher blood glucose in the morning as well.

So even though you may sleep and just the impact of the light shining on your on your skin or it Kind of penetrating and into your eyes can have huge impact on your kind of biology as well. So it's just something that would be another tip is maybe invest in blackout curtains or blackout blinds. Huge, huge wins on that one.

Yeah. The blackout is I'm so with you on that one. I love nothing better than I want the room pitch. Whereas my husband would like a little chink of light, but I'm pitch all the way pitch black. And I find like that, if I go somewhere and I even have a chink of life. Coming through it, it annoys me. And so that's why, you know, if you do have sleep issues, it can be really benefit beneficial to go back to the battery alarm clock, you know, the old fashioned little ones with the three legs, something like that, because that means, you know, you don't have light there.

Um, I know sometimes there are, particularly in winter, there are different lamps that you can get, like the SADS, um, Yes, yeah. um, um, Seasonally Affected Disorder type lamps that can have an alarm embedded in them as well, so that you get natural light wakes you up, wakes you up, which can be very nice as well.

But I think, yeah, the light, we can't underestimate the impact of light. And yet we have so much light in our lives. It's like, and, you know, Between watching TV, you get stuck into a Netflix series. Yeah. Yeah. Very easy. You know, we did it last night and we were watching a new one last night and the kids were like, just another one.

I'm kind of like, no, but you do get stuck into that and you're, but you need to. So it's kind of just trying to establish those routines and habits that kind of set you up for success. Either there's huge wins to our health when we get there. Good, consistent sleep. And, you know, I see a nighttime routine as like, it's just preparation for that.

So I'm big into football coaching. So, you know, when players are preparing for, for a game, for example, the, the, the pre work the hour before the game, there's a lot of meticulous preparation from warmup and they have their own routines and that, and I just see. You know, the routine before bed to be something that allocates a warm up or a warm down before sleep because the, the benefits you'll gain from it, regardless of, you know, you're in great health or otherwise, but, you know, the benefits from good sleep are, are, are just endless.

And you, you, you've been educating us around menopause and the wide range of symptoms that women can experience during perimenopause and menopause. And I'm just reading Russell Foster's book called lifetime at the moment. And he charts on one of the pages, uh, a long list of, uh, emotional and physical impacts of, of circadian disruption and poor sleep.

And if you were to kind of chart, put that chart there on the chart of menopause symptoms, there's huge overlap, huge overlap, concentration, focus, anxiety, uh, stress, elevated cortisol levels, type two, you know, blood sugar issues, uh, blood pressure issues. So there's huge, um, uh, overlap between the symptoms of poor sleep and that some of the symptoms in perimenopause and menopause and what I wouldn't say sleep is a cure all it can go a hell of a long way to alleviating a lot of the symptoms big time and that goes into too if you look at if we go back to the hormones so we know the cortisol will impact disturb our sleep we wanted in the beginning of the morning we wanted to taper off as we get close to nighttime, if the body is producing too much cortisol, it impacts the production of our key female hormones.

So that means that shows how sleep can have an impact because stress impacts. If you're not getting sleep, it becomes like a domino. It's catch 22. And it literally means that whilst we're producing too much cortisol, we're robbing ourselves of the production, particularly of progesterone, that calming.

hormone that is so vital in all stages of life, but particularly as we come into perimenopause. Yeah. So really, you know, putting the time and effort into good sleep quality is so important, Brian. And I think the other thing is it's thinking about the long term. Benefits of sleep, like you've mentioned many of them there, but, and one of the key ones is the cognitive function.

So when we are sleeping well, and our body gets that opportunity to restore every night, it also means that we're looking after our cognitive health at the same time. Now there's loads of other things that you can do as well, but sleep is a primary factor when it comes to making sure that we have strong sleep.

And I think it's really just understanding the implications of sleep deprivation and the long term impacts that has on many aspects of our health, cardiovascularly. But, you know, Particularly when it comes to female health, the impact on cognitive function is really important. Yeah. Well, I mean, from my own experience, the first thing that hit me was brain fog.

So, and it hit me and it hit me hard. I didn't know what it was. And, um, when you're in a position where you might have to present to a small team or to a bigger team and then a word escapes you or you meet someone, you know, and you're, You can't remember their name. Uh, it's, it's very, it is, it is very embarrassing more, more than anything else and very, very frustrating.

Um, so it hit me cognitive, it hit my cognitive function and it hit me hard. Um, but I can honestly say since I've got my sleep together, um, that doesn't happen too much anymore, thankfully. Yeah. And I would say the same. I probably my number one priority in, you know, my own perimenopause menopause journey has been sleep.

So I will. Put everything in sleep. I was walking with a friend of mine at the weekend and she was just asking me, what time do you go to bed at? And I said, Oh, generally, you know, half nine, 10. She's like, Oh my God, do you have a life? And I was like, yeah, it just starts very early. But I, because I know if I miss that window, I know I pay for the next day.

I know I'll feel more tired and my God, I know the brain fog will be more heightened. So for me, it's. You know, it's one of my top priorities is kind of, you know, half, half nine, 10 o'clock I'm in bed and like that, you know, I'd read a couple of chapters and then. You know, bang, 10, 15 minutes, I'm gone, I'm out for the count.

So I think it is just kind of understanding where you're at, particularly for anyone who's going through menopause, understanding where you're at in the journey and prioritizing your symptoms. Because, you know, if your key symptom is anxiety, certainly sleep can help, but there might be other steps that can help as well, as we'll have talked about on different webinars and so forth.

But I think Just understanding that sleep bit like an octopus, the tentacles are far reaching and it'll just has so many benefits, not just to how you are today, but also to your longterm, the future proofing aspects that you can, Yeah, and it's not that it's getting a lot more attention from, you know, it's not just Matthew Walker who speaks about sleep anymore.

There are many functional medical practitioners, especially in the United States who now profess the benefits of sleep and have it up their sleeve. There and it's part of their kind of top three exercise, nutrition, and sleep to kind of group them together now as being the kind of this trio of things you can do every day that are beneficial for your health.

And I, I mean, I hear it even from my own son, Gabrielle, who's 12. Now he's starting to talk to me a little bit more about sleep. He probably hears me speaking about it, but he's a lot more interested in like what, what happens when we sleep. And so he asks questions around that as well, which is, which is great to see because I wish I had have known more at his age, it would have made a huge difference to me, um, but.

Probably professionally and probably from a sporting sense as well. It must have impacted me along the way. Um, but, um, I'm kind of happy to speak about it a lot more now and try and get the message out there. Just, just, just how important it is and how foundational it is to good health. You know, I do believe when, when sleep is right, and then if you can kind of build a good kind of diet and nutrition on top of that, good exercise routine and stress management, you know, it really leads to kind of this kind of Optimal optimal health.

Yeah, there's a reason, isn't there? When, you know, like I remember when I had my first child, nothing, nothing prepared me for sleep deprivation, nothing. Maybe it was a pre runner to what happens as you bump through perimenopause, menopause, but, but certainly you know, any new parent has the same experience in terms of how challenging that loss of sleep is.

And I think when we When we come back then to perimenopause and menopause, it isn't, it isn't the normal practice that as we get older, we have, we should have interrupted sleep. I think that's there because other factors come into play. There could be urinary issues. There can be many different aspects, but really we should still be having.

Good quality sleep, the number of hours might change, but I think it's just all about, you know, making sure put everything, put everything into sleep. That's what I always say, because the domino impact it has, particularly on many of the symptoms of menopause. I know so many women who will say to me when they get their sleep right, they're more resilient.

They're able to handle Maybe challenging situations better. They, you know, the brain fog may not be as heightened as it has been before. So I think it's just understanding it's worth putting the work in, as you said, starting at the beginning of the day and going through for the benefits it has today, but also.

Long term as well. Yeah. And I heard it beautifully put. I think it was Matthew Walker on a recent podcast. Um, I don't know if you listened to the diary, the diary of a CEO, uh, Stephen Bartlett and Stephen kind of asked him a question very early in the podcast. Like tell me why sleep is so important. Like where do you rate it?

And he answered saying, well. If I prevent you from eating for 24 hours, you'll be okay. If I prevent you from exercising for 24 hours, you're going to be okay. But if I prevent you from sleeping for 24 hours, you're going to be in trouble. So I thought, Oh, it's a really good way of putting that across. It really kind of got the message across that sleep is crucial.

And you know, without proper sleep, you're going to have, you know, even one night, one night of bad sleep, you will have issues, you'll have a problem functioning properly the next day. And it impacts your biology in so many different ways. Yeah, no, that's brilliant. And I think that's a lovely note to end on in terms of, I think we've certainly, um, given our listeners, uh, very good thoughts in relation to why you want to put some time and effort, uh, behind sleep.

And we will share some of the resources that we mentioned, cause we touched on quite a few. So we'd share those as well that, um, everyone can access them. So thanks a million Brian for sharing. And, um, I look forward to hearing. Any new continuous updates you have in relation to your own sleep journey.