How poor sleep affects your health, weight and energy in midlife

Do you find yourself waking in the night, feeling tired no matter how much coffee you drink, craving sugary foods in the afternoon, or struggling with stubborn weight gain?

If so, poor sleep could be playing a bigger role in your health than you realise.

Many women notice changes in their sleep during their 40s and 50s. Hormonal changes, stress, busy lives and changing routines can all make it harder to fall asleep, stay asleep, or wake feeling refreshed. Unfortunately, poor sleep doesn't just leave you feeling tired the next day. It can affect your appetite, energy levels, mood, blood sugar balance, ability to cope with stress and even how easily you maintain a healthy weight.

Sleep is one of the foundations of good health, yet it is often the first thing we sacrifice when life gets busy. In this article, I'll explain why sleep matters so much, how a lack of sleep can impact your health, and some simple steps you can take to improve both the quantity and quality of your sleep.

How Poor Sleep Affects Weight

Sleep and weight are intimately related. If you are not getting enough sleep on a regular basis, you are setting yourself up to be hungrier, eat more, weigh more, and have a harder time losing weight. It’s not all in your head.

Busy mums and working women alike, many of you are likely sleep deprived.

Scientists now know that, if you are consistently surviving on too little sleep (that’s less than seven and a half hours of good sleep per night), you’re not going to be functioning at your best, focusing properly or thinking creatively. The cherry on top is that you are also sabotaging any attempts to take control of healthy eating and your weight.

Sleep deprivation causes hormone imbalance, and I’m not talking about PMT, but the hormones that directly affect your feelings of hunger. Ghrelin (the hunger hormone that makes you feel more hungry) and leptin (the satiety hormone that tells you when you’ve had enough to eat) are majorly disrupted when you are not sleeping enough. So, after a night of lousy sleep, if you feel like you need to eat a banquet, it’s not all in your head but rather in your hormones. The feast you desire is going to be filled with high-carb, starchy foods and not the lovely healthy ones you might otherwise choose.

For many women, these challenges become even more noticeable during perimenopause and menopause, when hormonal changes can further disrupt sleep quality and make it harder to feel rested.

Why Sleep Problems Are So Common During Perimenopause and Menopause

Many women notice changes in their sleep during perimenopause and menopause, even if they have always been good sleepers in the past.

As oestrogen and progesterone levels begin to fluctuate and decline, sleep can become lighter and more disrupted. Some women find it harder to fall asleep, while others wake during the night or wake much earlier than they would like and struggle to get back to sleep.

Hot flushes and night sweats can certainly play a role, but they are not the only reason sleep often suffers during this stage of life. Hormonal changes can also affect mood, stress resilience and blood sugar balance, all of which can influence how well we sleep.

Unfortunately, poor sleep can then create a vicious circle. A bad night's sleep can increase cravings for sugary and refined foods, make us feel less motivated to exercise, affect our mood and increase feelings of stress. Over time, this can make it harder to maintain a healthy weight and support our overall health and wellbeing.

Happily, there is a lot that can be done to improve sleep quality. Supporting blood sugar balance, managing stress, getting regular movement and establishing a consistent sleep routine can all make a meaningful difference.

Stress and your hormones

Lack of sleep also messes with stress hormones, and stress messes with your sleep. It’s a vicious circle and one particularly good reason why it is so important to take the time to unwind before hitting the sack. Cortisol is one of the main stress hormones. It should follow a specific pattern throughout the day, starting off low (after all, you will have just got up from a ‘restful sleep’), rising to a peak in the morning to get you out of bed and gradually tailing off towards evening time. Prolonged periods of stress can create an imbalance in this daily rhythm that may lead to cortisol levels being high come night-time. Typically, this would leave you feeling tired but wired – absolutely exhausted, but your head is buzzing when you hit the pillow. Not exactly the recipe for success.

The stress placed on the body by lack of sleep also upsets your body’s sensitivity to insulin (the fat-storage hormone), which contributes to weight gain and this, in turn, exacerbates hormonal symptoms like hot flushes and night sweats.

Falling levels of oestrogen and progesterone can also affect sleep quality. Oestrogen helps your body use serotonin, which is needed to produce melatonin, the hormone that regulates your sleep-wake cycle. Progesterone has a naturally calming effect, so as levels decline many women notice it takes longer to fall asleep and they wake more easily during the night.

Why Balanced Blood Sugar Supports Better Sleep

The more starchy carbs you eat, the more glucose is in your blood and the higher the amount of insulin that your body needs to restore blood sugar balance. If your diet is high in starchy carbs like bread, rice, pasta and sugars, you make more insulin, which creates blood sugar fluctuations at night, and these cause sleep disturbances. A sugar ‘crash’ at night triggers a release of cortisol to wake you up at the wrong time, and this can shift you out of deep sleep into a lighter sleep phase. Moving to a way of eating that balances your blood sugar helps significantly improve the quality of your sleep.

Tips for a good nights sleep

There are a number of things you can do (or not do) to improve your chances of sleeping well.

DO

• Try to go to bed at the same time every day. Your body thrives on routine.

• Keep the temperature in your bedroom comfortable; not too hot, nor too cold.

• Use your bed only for sleep and sex. This may help you completely switch off.

• Keep the bedroom completely dark, so you’re not disturbed by light, which your brain detects even when your eyes are closed. Eye masks can be useful.

• Spend time outdoors to soak up the sun.

• Try to take some gentle exercise every day. There is evidence that regular exercise improves restful sleep. This includes stretching and aerobic exercise. A brisk walk ticks both boxes.

• Make an effort to relax for at least 5 minutes before going to bed - a warm bath, massage, meditation.

• Keep your feet and hands warm. Wear warm socks and/or mittens or gloves to bed if you struggle with cold extremities.

• Consider getting a traditional alarm clock so your smartphone can stay out of the bedroom (see below). Better still, work out how much sleep you need by going to bed 15 minutes earlier until you find that you wake up naturally before your alarm. That’s your personal sleep requirement.
  

DON’T

• Engage in stimulating activities – like playing a competitive game, watching an edge-of-the-seat film, or having an important conversation with a loved one. Even using smartphones and tablets can interfere with sleep, because they emit the same kind of light as the morning sun.

• Eat a heavy meal within four hours of going to bed.

• Drink caffeine in the afternoon – including coffee, ‘normal’ and green tea, and colas.

• Use alcohol to help you sleep. Alcohol can make sleep more disturbed.

• Go to bed too hungry. Have a snack before bed – a glass of milk or banana are ideal.

• Try to avoid daytime naps.

• Try not to get frustrated if you can’t sleep. Go to bed in a positive mood – “I will sleep tonight”.

You will almost certainly have read some of these tips before.

Just knowing the information is not going to give you the restful night’s sleep you are looking for. The only thing that counts is action.

If you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that lack of sleep is at the root of not getting organised enough to plan your meals ahead of time (which may result in your feeling forced to grab a coffee and croissant on the way to work), has you craving sugary snacks you wouldn’t otherwise eat and feeling like a shadow of your normal self, I invite you to put getting more and/or better sleep at the top of your to-do list this week to see what a difference it can make.

You might have a whole list of things you want to improve this week, but if sleep has slipped down your priority list, bringing it back into focus could have a positive knock-on effect on your energy, food choices, mood and overall wellbeing.

Sleep is one of the key areas we focus on inside the Midlife Nutrition Reset and during my 1:1 nutrition programmes. If you'd like support with sleep, energy, cravings or weight management, you can join the waitlist for the next Midlife Nutrition Reset or book a free Health & Energy Review to discuss the best place to start.