Reality Check: Sleep is essential for your hormone health because your body does most of its healing while you are sleeping, and if you are not sleeping well, you are not giving your body a chance to heal.
As a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine who has specialized in women’s health and hormones for well over a decade, I have seen the beauty that happens when women start sleeping well again.
There is a reason it is called “beauty sleep.” You start looking younger and have more energy when you sleep better.
Sleep affects so many things, but you may not have heard that your sleep affects hormones and hormone levels affect sleep.
When people aren’t sleeping well, it often is connected to your daily lifestyle routine. Having busy work schedules and high anxiety during the day does not set you up for a good night’s sleep.
I had a peri-menopausal patient who worked long hours and typically skipped lunch. She was having a challenging time staying asleep. Every night, she would wake up at 3 a.m., which in Chinese Medicine 3 am is related to the liver, and the emotions in the liver are stress and anxiety.
I had her change two things, and she started sleeping like a baby.
-I told her she needed 30 minutes to stop and eat her lunch because she was messing with her blood sugar levels, which affected her stress hormones.
-I had her set an alarm on her phone for every 1.5 hours to stop whatever she was doing and take a pause for just 1 minute. I had her breathe deeply into her abdomen and take a long, extended exhale.
Dr. Libby, a nutritional biochemist, says, “On a physical level, when we are in the red zone or fight or flight response, the only thing that science currently knows that will get us out of that is to extend the length of our exhale.”
Almost every hormone is released during your circadian rhythm. The importance of sleep and hormone health is practically inseparable. If you sleep well, your hormones are balanced; if you don’t, they can get pretty darn wacky.
- Make sleep a priority. If you haven’t already, start telling yourself that you are good at sleeping and sleep well. Even if you don’t, this will rewire your brain and mentally prepare you for a good night’s sleep.
- Break up with your phone, social media and Netflix one hour before sleep. If you have heard this often, why are you not doing it? If you have problems sleeping, you need to start changing your lifestyle habits; this is a game changer for sleep.
- Eat well during the day, and don’t skip a meal. It will affect your blood sugar levels and mess with your hormones. It will return to haunt you at night and wake you around 3 a.m. If this is you, then you might want to consider eating your meals at the same time every day and don’t skip a meal
- Cut back on caffeine. No one likes to hear this, but since you are reading this, you must have problems sleeping; this might be the culprit. A Harvard Medical Publication says, “A single cup of coffee in the morning means a sleepless night. That may be because caffeine blocks the effects of adenosine, a neurotransmitter thought to promote sleep.”
- Do one thing that can help you that day; don’t try and do it all at once. Getting overwhelmed will not set you up for a good night’s sleep. One thing that day that can progress you.
Everyone needs sleep to optimize their health, and it is ultimately up to you to make the changes you need to sleep better so that you can improve your hormone health.
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