by Beth MT
Sleep, menopause and food: What’s the link?
by Sophie Pelham-Burn NMEDSCI, ANUTRn
INight-time sleep is one of the most widely recognised contributors to overall health, both physical and mental. But as we get older it can become increasingly harder to achieve, and more so for women than for men. Waking feeling unrefreshed, daytime sleepiness, mood swings, irritability, and memory problems are just some of the issues we face when we’re not getting regular and good-quality sleep. Why is this more of a problem for women than men? Hormones. All of the hormones produced by our bodies are linked; we can’t alter the levels of one hormone without having a knock-on impact on several others. Of course, when going through perimenopause, menopause, and post- menopause, what’s happening? Hormone levels are changing! This will, of course, impact others further down the line and one of those impacted is melatonin, our sleepy hormone.
sleep. When we don’t get enough good quality sleep over time we generally end up with higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Higher cortisol levels reduce the amount of melatonin our pineal gland, located in the brain, can produce. Lower melatonin means it’s harder to get to sleep in the first place, and can make it harder to stay asleep too. Cue poor sleep, more cortisol, even less melatonin, and so on. It’s a vicious cycle. Gut health is also impacted by sleep deprivation. Insufficient sleep for as little as 2 days has been demonstrated to have a negative impact on the gut microbiome, reducing the total quantity of microbes and also the diversity. As well as being a problem for digestion, having an out-of-whack microbiome can also disrupt sleep, as up to 90% of the hormone serotonin is produced in the gut. Serotonin is our mood-regulating hormone, so if we don’t have a lot of that around we can struggle with emotional resilience and irritability, and it’s also a precursor to, you guessed it, melatonin. Another vicious cycle!
As well as decreasing melatonin levels as we age, certain menopause symptoms can also disrupt
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