Episode Transcript
Speaker 0
Welcome back to This Is Perimenopause. In our last episode, Stefan Underwood, senior VP of methodology at Exos, gave us the so what of sleep. We knew sleep was good for us, but now we know just how important it is for our brain health, muscles, emotional regulation, and every aspect of our health and well-being. Part one was the so what of sleep, and today, Stefan is back for part two, the now what of sleep. If you haven't yet listened to part one, please do that now. And if you have listened to part one, carry on, and please enjoy Stefan's framework for how to get better sleep. This episode is brought to you by Indi, Canada's leading mattress brand, trusted by over one million happy sleepers. We often think of sleep as something we can sacrifice to get more done. But as you'll hear in today's episode, sleep is actually what helps everything else work better. It's when your brain consolidates memories and learning, your muscles recover and grow, your emotions reset, and your body repairs for the day ahead. One of the simplest ways to support better sleep is by creating the right sleep environment. Indi mattresses are designed with breathable, cooling comfort foam and motion isolating layers to help minimize disruptions so you can get the quality sleep your body needs because sleep isn't time off. It's time put in. Learn more at indy dot com and sign up for our tip insider paid subscription at This Is Perimenopause on Substack. If you do that and follow Indy on Instagram or Facebook, you'll be entered for a chance to win a free Indy bedroom makeover from now until August twenty fourth. Terms and conditions apply.
Speaker 1
So I think everyone now is convinced, like, the so what is it's been reframed. But now what? Now what? Please, like, tell us how to sleep.
Speaker 0
And I think really important too, I just responded to a comment on our social media again today. We had a we had a hot tip go up about sleep and this person said, this is such great information. Thank you. So important. I was told again and again by my GP that waking up five times a night was normal at my age. Please don't accept that to anyone listening. There are sleep challenges that need medical intervention, and there are a variety of tools, and we talk about that in our other episodes in this series. So so that is one big pillar of this. And there are things that, we can all be doing or doing a little better. And please tell us what your what your top hits are for this.
Speaker 2
No. I I appreciate that. Really good again if we're talking clinical sleep dysfunction. I am not that expert. I am not a physician, but please go seek help, talk to people because I agree with you. It is normal that sleep is more disrupted as we age and especially for women going through, like, perimenopausal movement as sleep becomes disrupted. So it is normal that you're more likely to struggle with waking up five times a night. That doesn't mean that we should just accept that and go, well, that's my life now, which I think is so. So, I agree. So it breaks down that so what are the things we can do to try and protect the sleep we're getting? Right? I often say perfect is the enemy of good or better. And so, yes, there is going to be there are physiological reasons why sleep will become more disrupted through your perimenopausal years. So what are some things we can try to do that are supportive of sleep? It won't magically necessarily make you sleep eight perfect hours a night every night. Maybe you're lucky it will, maybe it won't. But maybe it helps you some nights or more often than not where you're waking up less frequently. So let's dive into some of those things that we can do. I like to look at sort of three chapters to this conversation, right, if we're making intentional choices. The first chapter is your foundational biology. What are the things you can do to be supportive of your foundational biology around sleep? So your circadian rhythm. What are things we can do to anchor our circadian rhythm and attempt to have as healthy a circadian rhythm as possible? Then the next chapter of the conversation is what are things that I can do that are pro sleep within my environment. And I like to sort of talk about the internal environment and the external environment. So internal environment's within you, external environment is your actual sleep domain. And then the last the the last chapter is what can I do to understand sleep disruptors so that I make more intentional choices? Right? So if we if we look at a long list of things within getting your foundational biology on board, setting the right environment, and minimizing disruptions. Those are ways we can create pro sleep strategies. We're gonna cover a lot of things right now. We'll we'll see where the conversation goes and rapid fire off a few of them. But to the listener, please don't think that you need to do all of these things. The the long list isn't to overwhelm and say, holy crap. So that's the seventeen things I've gotta do to sleep better.
Speaker 1
And I'm not gonna sleep tonight just thinking about it. Yeah.
Speaker 2
Exactly. Right? I'm gonna lie awake at night staring
Speaker 3
at the
Speaker 2
ceiling, obsessing over with the things that I heard on the podcast today. No. So the the reason I give a lot is to say every person in their own context of their own life is going to resonate with some well, that feels impossible for me to change right now, but that feels approachable. The long list is for you to pick the one, maybe two or three if you're ambitious, but, like, the one thing that you're like, I'm gonna commit to this for the next month and see if it makes a change in the way that I sleep. Right? So we can talk about a lot of things, but not try and do them all at once. Is that fair?
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
As a caveat?
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah. Alright.
Speaker 2
So let's talk about a few simple ways to get our our our sleep, you know, our our circadian rhythm working for us, which by the way, perimenopause disrupts your circadian rhythm. Like, that's just so so your audience but what we can do, and you may have heard some of these before, they're starting to get popular on social media and being pushed in places, but there's evidence to support them. But we like to talk about things that serve as anchors to your circadian rhythm. So the first one I like to talk about is light, like morning light. So the idea of getting morning light into your eyeballs every day consistently as an anchor is a really good anchor for this is a time to be awake. This is the time for the cortisol to be higher. This is time to be alert. And then you get a second anchor of evening light, and I'm talking natural light. Go outside, expose your eyeballs. Photoreceptors are amazing, and not through a window. Like, go outside. And you see the changing hues in the evening, that's a great signal to be calming and and say, we're getting that stage where we wanna release some melatonin, and we wanna start getting into. And so however you can put that into your daily routine, whether it is a morning walk, whether it's a evening walk with the family after dinner, whatever it may be, natural light is a really good answer. So that would be one way we could get our biology on board. The next one I like to talk about is consistency of everything, but consistency of of sleep times. So sleep and wake times. Trying to go to bed at the same time every night and trying to wake at the same time every morning within, like, a half hour window is really positive for circadian rhythm. We don't wanna be getting to the weekend and sleeping a whole bunch more and then cutting it short weekdays and and just having complete inconsistency. If we are able to gain consistency, that is, again, really supportive. Our body wants routine. And then address any airway issues or breath issues. Again, I'm I'm not a doctor, but if you are having any sort of sleep apnea type situation
Speaker 3
Mhmm.
Speaker 2
Our airway is a final part of our biology, and our breathing is a key piece of sleep and everything that needs to take place for healthy sleep. And so it is worth seeking help with an expert if you think that you have disruptions to your airway.
Speaker 1
And also ladies, if you listen to a couple of our other sleep episodes, women can have sleep apnea. It's and it's more common in perimenopause. It's not just the the guys with the thick neck and the that get sleep apnea. Women can do it too.
Speaker 2
And and there could be even beyond a point where there's not apnea apnea and not gap breathing, but you can just maybe not have the straight motion. Airways between breathing, have obstruction. So, like, this is where people can play with Breathe Right strips, opening nasal. I'm not officially recommending this. I'm saying I've known some people that's been influential for, but you'd wanna do your own reading and research. But have you read about mouth taping at all?
Speaker 1
Yes. So I was wondering where you're about to go with this. Yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Like, I'm I'm reading up on mouth taping. So to be clear, we're not talking about duct tape. We're we're talking about, like, the paper tape that's very easy for it, like, if you need it.
Speaker 0
It's just a little strip across the top. It's not all over your entire mouth. Yeah.
Speaker 2
To be clear, like, this is where it might go.
Speaker 0
Feel like a kidnapping scenario.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Unfortunately, they have a good airway. So I played around with it, and it it wasn't profound for me. But I have a friend that it, like, is listed as one of the most profound changes they've experienced.
Speaker 1
Interesting. And I find that my my face cream doesn't let the melt tape stick to my
Speaker 2
so There. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1
I'll buy the I'll put the book. What is the what is the name of the book? It's like breath. Is it breath? Breathe? Breathe. Breathe. We'll put that
Speaker 0
in the show notes because it I've read it. It's a great it's a it's a great read.
Speaker 2
Yeah. So getting your airway so having consistent timing of when you go to bed and wake, having consistent exposure to light and the different hues of light, and making sure that your airway is effective, those are fundamental things to say, like, let's get our biology as much as possible working for us, not against us, when we're already experiencing this decline. I say we are experiencing this decline. You're falling off the cliff. Right? Like, the rapid decline. So so that would be sort of chapter one. Okay. Chapter two is then how do we get the environment right? And this is one where I like to point out that every person is different, First and foremost, every person is different. Then as you're talking about contextualizing this to perimenopause, every woman is different in some elements of how perimenopause is experienced. And then even within the same woman, because of fluctuations in hormone, it isn't quite the clip. Right? It's not like everything goes from here to here instantly. There's moments of big fluctuations
Speaker 1
in some hormone Everything's different.
Speaker 2
That that that even for that same woman, this week could be different to that week. Right? And so so take all of this, not with a grain of salt, but with a a sense of common sense, a degree of common sense of what is right for you. And so I'll say some things, but I want us to think logically about how we apply them for each individual. So when we talk about the environment, what you'll always hear is cold. Let's dive into each
Speaker 3
of those
Speaker 2
cold. K? Here's why cold. When we sleep, you have a dip in your core temperature and that drop in your core temperature, and then through the evening, your core temperature continues to rise, rise, rise, rise, rise. The elevation of core temperature is one of the things that signals to us that it's time to start waking up. So if we're running excessively hot in the night, that's a signal to us to be awake. It's disturbing our sleep. Whereas if we can effectively cool our environment, and so now we we have this cooler moment through our deep sleep and slow gradual rise in the morning, we can stay asleep longer in
Speaker 3
the middle of the night. It it
Speaker 2
it's not signaling to be awake. Now there's things to unpack there, especially with respect to perimenopause. First of all, I would say that some women tend to run hot. Like, there's the classic hot flash and all that, but there's some that also tend to run really cold at certain times.
Speaker 0
Mhmm.
Speaker 2
And so we don't wanna be so cold that we're shivering. And and there's sort of like your your window of temperature. This is for all humans. There's your your temperature window where you are neither shivering nor sweating. You're like thermo neutral. That window narrows for women through perimenopause.
Speaker 0
Of course it
Speaker 2
does. Right. Right. And so it's like easier to be in that shivering state, easier to be in that sweating state. There's a narrower band of this is my sweet spot. You wanna be cool, but you don't wanna be shivering or cool. And I say all that because, you know, everything says, yeah. Cold room, dark room, quiet room. And my wife is one that really, really runs cold. She got fingerless gloves because her hands being out to hold the
Speaker 3
book from the cover.
Speaker 2
It won't be so cool. So she, like, reads in gloves.
Speaker 1
That's amazing.
Speaker 3
I'll pop it like that. Yeah. In the winter.
Speaker 2
All that to say, don't go and set your room cold saying I heard on the podcast I need a cold room. And definitely don't buy into, like, the absolutes. Like, there'll be people out there that will say, like, well, it should be, you know, x to y.
Speaker 1
Degrees. Yeah.
Speaker 2
And the reason I'm not doing that is because some people will fixate on that. I need to do it. And then they're, like, hurting their sleep because they're so freaking cold. But just know that when you overheat, that's a signal to warm up and everything is relative to you. So have a cool environment. Also know that it is about the relative change in your core temperature. So taking a warm shower before bed, as soon as you step out of the shower, you're chilly for that moment. Like, you cool off. There's a there's a rapid shift plus everything in you. If you're taking that nice relaxing warm shower, all of your thermoregulation is saying cool off, cool off, cool off. So you get a relative drop in your core temperature, and then you slide into your sheets, and you've had that relative drop, it can help some people fall asleep. So a warm shower I thought
Speaker 1
it was the warm I I always thought it was the warm part of it that just relaxed you, and this is cool. Well, I
Speaker 2
don't know if it can be because the warm is relaxing. And so for a person who's feeling a little agitated, like, up regulated that needs to calm down before bed to help support sleep, the warm does that. But there's also an actual thermo regulatory side to it It helps. Nice. Okay. Environment is important. Beyond cool environment, that quiet environment, I say our brain is always on scanning for threats. So it's it's consistent soundscape. So quiet environment or this is where white noise machines and things like that can be supportive is if you don't wanna hear the the furnace kicking on or if you're in a busy city and there's people inside your window, like, that can create a consistent soundscape. And the dark is very true. Our eyelids aren't good at creating dark. All you need to do is close your eyes and wave your hand in front of your face, and you can still see the changes in light to realize that light's still getting through our eyelids. And so we should have a dark enough room that when I put my hand on arm's length away, I can't see it. And if we can't create that type of a sleep environment, eye masks become a really good thing though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sleep masks. So that's the big three for the external environment. But there's so much more we can talk about environmentally to go beyond what everyone's likely heard before in those things. So I like to say, well, let's get even more micro to that. When we start talking about the environment, there's the environment outside your bed, there's the environment inside your bed. So there's products made now, like Eight Sleep Mattress, the the the the Ooler who makes the Ooler. And just to to be clear, Exos is not partnered with
Speaker 1
any of the ChiliSleep.
Speaker 2
ChiliSleep. Right? To the ChiliPack. I have no financial gain in any of this. I'm not partnered with them. Exos is not partnered with them. Just to disclose, there's there's no conflict of interest in that. But there's companies on the market now that are both creating your room macro environment, but your bed micro environment. So getting, like, the chili to cool off and to be able to set a unique temperature for you and your partner is something that can be supportive. What are the sheets that I'm using? Mhmm. Like, the comforter that I've got, the pillow that I've got. Makes a huge difference. Like, when we start thinking about the mattress that I'm on, how did I not say mattress first? When we start thinking of the environment, let's go beyond just cool, dark, and quiet and say, like, the bed I'm in, the pillow I'm on, am I really investing in a sleep environment that is supportive of me sleeping well?
Speaker 0
And it sounds silly or simp not silly. It sounds simple, but Michelle and I have worked long and hard on sleep because sleep was one of the first things to go sideways for us. And it wasn't until when we have a a partnership with Endy, until we started talking with them that we oh, yeah. We've been sleeping on a mattress from I don't know when, and couldn't remember the last time we bought a pillow. Well, yeah. Like, these things matter, and they have a big impact.
Speaker 2
They do. And then that last chapter is identifying, disruptors and saying what are things I can do to minimize these disruptors. And and these are gonna be so obvious and everyone has heard them, but it's like just to know them and to think about them. It's like caffeine.
Speaker 3
Mhmm.
Speaker 2
Right? Yes. Genetics. There's a genetic, expression that some people are fast responders or or fast metabolizers and some are slow. Like, we don't all use caffeine the same way. So there will be people that are like, I can have that cup of coffee after dinner and still sleep fine. You're not. It's still affecting your sleep. There is still a half life of caffeine. And so really trying to restrict caffeine intake after noon, two PM. Like, that'd be one. I'm not here to vilify alcohol. I'm not here to say there's anything wrong with the social connection, the importance of that. But just know the cost of it. Even a single glass of wine can disrupt your sleep. And anyone who's started playing in the wearables game starts learning. It used to be like, yeah, of course. If I can have two bottles of wine, I feel worse the next day. Got it. But I'm just having one last, you know. I'm I'm fine. You start looking things like your heart rate variability and your resting heart rate and your core temperature. Yeah. All these metrics of recovery that wearables give us if you're a person who is using wearables, and it's like, alcohol does have an effect. And so just pick your moments. Right? Again, I'm not here to vilify, but if you've got something important for the next day or when we're talking like your day to day norm, maybe try and find something that replaces that glass of wine and save it for special occasions like that family get together, that wedding, that moment where, of course, I'm gonna do that. And then the third disruptor that I like to talk about a lot is the other living beings in the household. Pets, partners, and and it's not to say you can get rid of all disruptions. I'm not suggesting kick your partner out and kick your kids out. Obviously, we can't get rid of everything. It's funny. My wife and I talk about, like, we continue to sleep in the same room in the same bed because there's just this connection of that. But there is this truth of, like, when I come home late from a work trip and so I sneak downstairs to not disturb her and sleep in the guest bedroom. We both have the best sleep ever when we're in separate bed. But there's things that can be done, like split kinks so that you each have your own bedding. So if I roll over, I don't take all of the sheets and her with me and disrupt her and wake her up. Get the right bed environment so that, like, I run hot, she runs cold. So we need to have different bedding in order to not have a sleep environment that works for one of us and not the other. Mhmm. So those are all other things you can be thinking through to try and protect your sleep. I wanna throw one more at you though, if we Okay.
Speaker 1
Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2
So I wanna come back, bring this full circle to what we talked about, earlier as well as add something new. It isn't just saying make these simple changes. Like, yeah, I'll get out, get some natural light in my eyes, or I'll really pay attention to the mattress that I've got, pillow I've got. We need to talk about the internal environment as well. Right? And so these are the things we do to change what's happening inside our body. We've already talked about heavy lifting. There's this bidirectional element between heavy lifting and sleep. When we talked about it earlier, we talked about how sleep is supportive of what you're trying to do to grow muscle and the heavy lifting. It's another reason why you should look at lifting heavy. It is supportive of sleep. Right? So when you start lifting heavier, it has a profound impact on your ability to get into sleep and drive sleep. If we talk about one of the things that drives sleep pressure in our in our brain, it's called adenosine. K? Mhmm. And what drives energy for us is adenosine triphosphate, ATP, if you've ever heard of ATP in the cells. Right?
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
And so ATP, adenosine triphosphate means there's three phosphates, and one of those phosphates breaks off and that yields energy. When I'm lifting heavy weights, when I need immediate energy, I'm not talking there's no oxygen. This is not aerobic because it's amyloid. So I need to just suddenly jump or do something quickly, lift that heavy weight. I'm getting my energy from ATP. One of the phosphates breaks off. That leaves with a DP, adenosine diphosphate, so two instead of three. Right? And a loose phosphate ion. Adenosine in our brain drives sleep pressure as well. So after the lift, right, there's a drive to increase adenosine as I recover from that lift because I've depleted a lot of my ATP stores. And so I build more adenosine, and adenosine drives the sleep pressure in my brain. So by doing the lifting, you're promoting an internal environment of sleep that night. We're changing the internal environment, and we can go beyond that of of of of other things it does. When you lift consistently, so not that one time, while you're lifting, you're creating a lot of muscle tension. You're creating what is called sympathetic tone. Our sympathetic nervous system is often known as fight or flight. Mhmm. And when you're lifting something heavy, I know it's not a scary threat like a bear, but your body is in a sympathetic state. Right? The outcome of that, especially when you lift consistently, is now your body knows that autonomic nervous system flexibility. So you go and lift and the pendulum swings to be more sympathetic and you carry sympathetic tone, but what that means is when you then are done in recovering, the pendulum swings back the other way and muscles carry less tension and less tone. You become more parasympathetic, more rest and digest, more feed and breathe. And so that heavy lifting is helping you be more parasympathetic and have more adenosine in your brain to drive a better internal sleep environment where you're more chilled out and feeling tired.
Speaker 0
That's very cool. And I can attest, it does help. Lifting heavy does improve your sleep.
Speaker 2
Love it. It's a bidirectional relationship, and and I felt bad before. We only touched on how sleep helps the heavy lifting. It it is a bidirectional relationship. And then the one other, the bonus, I know we're coming up on time. We wanna talk about heat current moment when we talk about the internal environment. Remember I said that the point between shivering and narrows Mhmm. Right, through perimenopause, your floor for what is normal tends to narrow. And then the ceiling is that point where if you exceed that ceiling, it isn't just sweating. It's like an inappropriate autonomic response that goes, holy crap. I've overheated, and now I need to drop overheat, and I start completely sweating, and that is a hot flash. Right? Mhmm. If you can drop the floor down and if you can acclimate to heat So it's a part of your hypothalamus. Right? But we have our hypothalamus, and it is like our internal thermostat, and it is covered in heat, and perimenopause is wreaking havoc on it. Right? If you have a consistent heat exposure practice, you are teaching your body to acclimate to heat, a few things happen. One, that's a huge benefit is you're getting heat shock proteins, which you used to be able to get through other means. So you're still getting these heat shock proteins that have wonderful health effects for you. But you're sort of helping maintain a degree of calibration on that internal thermostat in your hypothalamus. This is a, I'll say, evolving field of study. When we look at academic papers on this, they tend to just start coming out in the last couple years. There's some clinical trials going on right now. What I'm getting at here is hot tubs and dry saunas. Mhmm. Right? There's a lot of research on health benefits of things like saunas. A lot. But you won't be surprised to know, women and perimenopausal women are underrepresented in the academic body of literature and Shocking.
Speaker 3
Look at, like, shocking. So you look at, like, holy smoke. But you're like, here's the method
Speaker 2
of sauna. Decreases all cause mortality by, like, sixty percent or something. I don't have the numbers in front of me. Don't quote me on this, but you get my point. And decreases cardiovascular events like heart attacks by, like, forty percent. Again, don't fully quote the numbers, but it's something like that. And then you go to the actual research, and it's incredibly powerful. Like, a a huge sample size over longitudinal research over, like, thirty years out of Finland because sonic culture is so big there. But you'll realize that the sample size of five thousand people is five thousand men, And we're generalizing that women are doing health science. So women have been misrepresented, but they're starting to emerge research specifically looking at heat formation, hot tubs, dry sauna for specifically perimenopausal women. And the hypothesis is that it's it helps support the calibration of the of that thermostat in your hypothalamus and and takes that floor and drops it a little bit while maintaining a comfort point with the ceiling and raises that a little bit of what hot actually feels like. So you don't hit that autonomic response of holy crap, I'm overheating. My body needs to point down and start sweating profusely. And so heat acclimation can I think there's some emerging evidence that is supportive? I'm I'm sort of you can tell I'm tiptoeing a little bit since I'm
Speaker 1
Fair. Fair.
Speaker 2
For the literature to look at here. But I think there's some really emerging research that says a heat acclimation practice is really supportive of maintaining that that thermostat in hypervascular mist so that you don't have as profound of hot flashes or frequent hot flashes. And now let's tie that back to sleep. What did I say early on was one of the number one disruptors of sleep was heat. The signal that tells us it's time to be awake is when you're hot. If your body artificially feels too hot or starts profusely sweating because of an autonomic response, you wake up. You now have a bunch of disrupted sleep patterns going back to the person who told your the doctor who told your friend it's just normal to be awake five times a night at this at this stage.
Speaker 3
Mhmm.
Speaker 2
A lot of the symptomology of pregnant menopause is made worse by a lack of sleep. And one of the number one threats through the sleep system is temperature, like, thermoregulation, which we know is changing due to the hormonal cliff that women are dropping off pregnant cause. And if you can practice being hot, the belief or the hypothesis is you might be able to diminish some of that.
Speaker 1
One more thing. Infrared sauna will same impact as a dry sauna? Like sorry. Infrared sauna is a dry sauna or
Speaker 3
no.
Speaker 1
Totally different.
Speaker 3
No. Infrared sauna is a dry sauna. Sorry. Sorry for my ignorance.
Speaker 2
No. Not ignorance at all. Infrared sauna is not a dry sauna. Dry sauna is the traditional Finnish sauna like the
Speaker 3
stones in the stove.
Speaker 1
So so can my infrared sauna okay. Because I'm doing I can go in there and get my, like, beauty done at the same time as my heat regulation. Maybe?
Speaker 2
I don't honestly know. I'd have to look it up and let you know. Or or we could do we can do some good I'm not an expert on that one. I haven't looked into it. Most of what I've looked into and most of the research I've seen has been what it is on saunas, it's been more on dry sauna because of a lot of it is, research down out of Scandinavian countries where
Speaker 3
it's such
Speaker 2
a big part of their culture. And the infrared sauna is not the culture, the dry sauna. It's the finished soft sauna. Okay. Yeah. Fair enough. I'm sure there's literature out there. We could we can look.
Speaker 1
But
Speaker 2
practice being hot, the hypothesis is that can help you sleep better. And if you sleep better, the hypothesis is that will make everything through perimenopause feel a little better. Again, not perfect, but better.
Speaker 1
Better.
Speaker 0
Amazing. We'll take it. We'll take it.
Speaker 1
Stefan, this has been so much amazing information. There's a lot to absorb here. I think everyone's gonna have to listen to this one a couple times because there's, like, there's gems every second. Everything you said was amazing. Is there any way you could distill this down to, like, one magic thing? Like, what is the one thing? I don't even know if this is possible, so you can just tell me no. But is is there one thing you would love every woman to know about sleep?
Speaker 2
It is hard to distill one thing I
Speaker 3
would
Speaker 2
love every woman to know about sleep other than to know it makes everything better so it is worth protecting and fighting for. And even if it is getting disrupted, remember that perfect is the enemy of better. So maybe it isn't as good as it once was, but that doesn't mean that you need to just tolerate it completely going to crap either. It's worth fighting for it to try and get it a little bit better.
Speaker 1
And and the and the and the and the steps that you gave us, yes. I mean, it does take a little bit of maybe self discipline, but they're doable. Like, this is all these are all really simple, not necessarily easy to maintain and to try and to build into our lifestyle. But those you've you've shared a lot of great tools that are not expensive necessarily, that are not, you know, difficult for us to try. So thank you. Yeah.
Speaker 2
I I yeah. If if we were trying to summarize everything, I would say to everyone, sleep honestly does influence positively every single cell and system in your body. Therefore, there's nothing meaningful you're trying to do in your life that I can't make an evidence based claim of how sleep will make it better. And once you then say, so now I wanna do something about it, focus on helping your foundational biology get on board by just building consistency and rhythm, And then focus on your sleep environment and and put time and effort into the right sleep environment for you. And then try and keep track of the things that disrupt your sleep, like possibly hot flashes and come up with something that could be a solution to it. And just take steps to see if you can make things better. Not perfect, but better. And if you are a person that is listening that goes beyond, like, I just gave everything as subclinical examples. If you're in that space of clinical sleep disruption, insomnia, things of that nature, the reason I didn't speak about it is because that's not my scope of practice, and I'm not an expert in that. But I would encourage you to not just say, well, this is the new this is the new norm.
Speaker 3
Mhmm. I
Speaker 2
encourage you to go talk to people. And if the sleep dysfunction is driven out of anxiety, there's CBT I. The I stands for insomnia. It's showing to work really effectively.
Speaker 1
It's the gold stand it's the gold standard.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Go talk to an expert who is a CBTI expert. If it is if it is, it will be hormonally driven. Hopefully, your GP is supportive. If not, though, there's amazing naturopaths. There's amazing other service out there. There's podcasts like this one. There is a lot of information out there for you to start being able to research and do things, but look at what you can do, again, clinically to manage some of the changes hormonally that are impacted. Like, my wife is at that stage right now, and and just being a passenger in that car, it's obviously not my Lyft experience. But the thing I'm always encouraging her to do is let's just one step at a time. And and don't try and change seventeen things at once, because then you don't know which one's working, which one's not. Make a change. Does it work for you? Does it not? And and while she would not be on here and claim that things are perfect, far from it, she would say she has learned probably more about herself, her body, and everything in the last couple years than she has in the rest of her life before. Mhmm. Right? Like, this it's a breathtaking yeah.
Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, thank you.
Speaker 0
Thank you. Thank you so much. This
Speaker 1
is great.
Speaker 2
You both. I appreciate you having me on. So I have no good experience with the topic whatsoever.
Speaker 0
Thanks so much for listening to the show. If you like what you hear, please subscribe and write a review
Speaker 1
So more women can find us and get a better understanding of what to expect in perimenopause.
Speaker 0
This information is not intended as medical advice. The intent of this information is to provide the listener with knowledge to support more efficient and effective communication with their medical provider.
