Tips For Falling Back To Sleep after Being Woken Up By Menopause Symptoms

After a long day, the prospect of being awakened by a hot flush or night sweats is the last thing anyone desires when trying to fall asleep. Menopause can throw up all kinds of challenges when it comes to maintaining a healthy and happy sleep routine, with fatigue becoming another symptom to manage in the midst of significant hormonal changes.

There’s certainly no magic solution to navigating the impact of menopause on sleep. By incorporating some proven strategies, however, you can find a way to ease back into sleep after a menopause-related interruption. Here’s a range of tips you can try for the next time you’re woken from a peaceful slumber, as well as key information about the relationship between menopause and sleep.

Why does menopause have an impact on sleep quality?

As women enter into menopause, the natural production of hormone levels starts to fluctuate. Oestrogen begins to decline, resulting in a wide range of physical symptoms and negative side effects. One of the most common (and recognised) of these is hot flushes, which leave women feeling as if a sudden sensation of heat has spread through their body in quick succession.

Unfortunately, these hot flushes aren’t just the domain of the daytime hours and can often interrupt slumber. For many women, this can become a cycle of frequent awakenings and subsequent difficulty in returning to sleep.

Practical tips for falling back asleep

If you’ve been woken up as a result of menopause’s symptoms intruding on your peace and quiet, don’t panic. Put these tips to work to support your return to sleep:

Ensure you’re in a sleep-friendly environment: It’s much harder to fall back asleep if your environment isn’t conducive to sleep in the first place. Create a cool, dark, and quiet room to give yourself the best chance of achieving high-quality sleep. Fans or air-conditioning can both be used to lower room temperature, and black-out curtains can give you more control over intrusive lights. 

• Create a comfortable resting space: Is your mattress supportive? How about your pillow? By prioritising comfort and support in your bedding, you’ll also increase your chances of drifting back into a restful sleep.
• Utilise breathing exercises and meditation: Techniques such as deep breathing, guided imagery, or mindfulness meditations can help to calm both your mind and body, assisting you in finding the peace required to return to sleep. 
• Try progressive muscle relaxation: This can be done by first tensing and then relaxing each muscle group in your body. Start from your toes and work your way up to your head, taking your time to truly notice the sensations in each muscle group. This is a powerful tool for promoting physical relaxation and can also help to reduce anxiety levels, therefore contributing to a higher likelihood of nodding back off to sleep.
• Revise your bedtime routine: Establishing a consistent bedtime routine can give your body the signals it needs that it’s time to prepare for sleep. If you’re woken up by a hot flush, revisiting parts of your routine could help to re-trigger those internal cues, such as reading or listening to calming music.
• Maintain a sleep diary: Documenting your sleep patterns can help you to note the frequency and severity of disruptions. From this information, you can look at any triggers or patterns, noting any valuable information to share with your healthcare provider. You may find that certain activities, food or drink contribute to the frequency of sleep disruptions, as well as certain medications.

How to encourage higher quality sleep

While these tips may help you to fall back asleep after you’ve been woken up by menopausal symptoms, there are a number of ways you can support yourself in achieving higher quality sleep in the first place. 

One of these lifestyle supports is in the area of food and drink intake. What you consume can have a significant impact on your sleep quality, either supporting a restful night’s sleep or making it more difficult to achieve one. Research recommends the following:

• Avoid stimulants: It’s important to limit your caffeine and alcohol intake, especially in the hours surrounding bedtime, as these substances can interfere with your ability to fall (and stay) asleep.
• Eat more sleep-inducing foods: Did you know certain foods can support better sleep?  Tryptophan, which is a precursor to the sleep-regulating hormone melatonin, and magnesium, which is a natural relaxant, can both play a critical role in encouraging healthy sleep patterns.You’ll find these in dairy products, as well as certain nuts, seeds, bananas, and whole grains. 

As well as interrogating your diet for opportunities to incorporate sleep-supporting nutrients, maintaining a regular exercise schedule can be a proactive way to enhance your rest. Regular physical activity has been directly linked to improvements in sleep quality. 

This is particularly relevant for menopausal women, where exercise can help to reduce the impact of hot flushes. It can also be useful in managing stress levels, as well as promoting a naturally deeper sleep as a result of physical weariness. It’s recommended to wrap up exercising a minimum of three hours before bedtime in order to avoid increasing your alertness through physical activity. 

What to do if you’re still struggling with poor sleep

Even after you’ve implemented various strategies to manage sleep disturbances, you may find that menopausal symptoms continue to disrupt your sleep significantly. If this is your ongoing experience, it’s time to seek professional support and advice.

A trusted medical practitioner can offer this support through completing a comprehensive evaluation of your individual situation. During this process, they’ll review your overall health, medical history, the intensity of your symptoms, and their impact on your daily quality of life. From this evaluation, they’ll be able to provide recommendations about the various pathways available to you to help you manage your symptoms effectively. 

One such medical intervention is hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Here, declining natural production of oestrogen and progesterone are supplemented through synthetic hormones, which can lead to a reduction in menopausal symptoms. For women struggling with hot flushes and night sweats, HRT can be transformative in their sleep experiences.

Conclusion

Whether you’re sleeping soundly each night, or you can’t remember the last time you weren’t kept awake by frustrating symptoms, you don’t need to navigate the ins and outs of varying menopausal symptoms alone. 

Find support for every aspect of your menopause experience with the friendly expert team at Australian Menopause Centre.