Menopause Discussion > Personal Experiences

Tell us how you cope with poor sleeping

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Dr. Heather Currie:
Insomnia (sleeplessness) or disturbed sleep (leading to tiredness and fatigue), may be partly due to the night sweats, control of which can lead to an improved sleep pattern, but insomnia has also been shown to be a menopausal symptom regardless of the presence of temperature changes and may begin a few years before the menopause.
Simple measures such as taking time to relax before going to bed by reading, watching television, or having a bath can make sure that you're not going to bed with your brain working overtime! Try to avoid caffeine or nicotine for at least 4 hours before bed time and don't have the bedroom too hot. Exercise during the day can help but don't exercise just before going to bed. Sometimes it actually helps to get up for a while, since lying and thinking about getting to sleep can make it harder to go off.
HRT has been shown to reduce insomnia and, because of the disruptive knock-on effects of lack of sleep, such as poor concentration, irritability and, of course, tiredness, some women choose to continue HRT purely for control of that symptom, even if they are not having flushes.
Some women find herbal drinks such as chamomile helpful, or sedative herbs such as valerian.

poppyrose:

I take night time Kalms, if I don't i do not get any sleep at all. My sleep is continually totally disrupted by night sweats and just lately I have been trialling something and they seemed to be reducing, I suddenly got a whole load of stress and of course we all know what stress does to our body!
Hence now am confused as to if what I was taking was working, it has stopped working or it is the stress I am under which is overriding all making everything seem a hundred times worse! I do not smoke and only have one coffee per day in the morning and do not drink any caffeine based drinks.

I actually made some graphs to monitor myself on these new herbal things and they seem to have taken around 4 weeks to start working (if they have that is!  :o But I could actually see the flushes/flashes/sweats starting to reduce. I also monitored what I was doing when I had a flush or sweat, in the hope I could identify a common denominator and thus eradicate it, well that was my theory anyway, I just cannot do anything about the other stress I am under at the present and I know this is not good for me.

I honestly cannot remember the last time I had a good night sleep and I have tried everything, but I refuse to ask for or take anything stronger than Kalms, I certainly do not want to go down that road!

Love Pops xxx  ;D

AnnieG:
I have found that the HRT has really helped me.  I have been on it for 3 months and in the last 2 months I have slept better than I have for the previous six years.  I had terrible insomnia before. 
As well as avoiding caffeine (rarely coffee and at most 2 cups of tea a day and none after 4pm) I find doing deep breathing helps as does yoga when I get a chance.  On days when I feel very tense I use Kalms and or I take a calcium and magnesium supplement - but to be honest none of these things really worked until I started the HRT.

jojo26:
I take Kalms too and have had to cut all caffeine out. Some nights I get better sleep than others but never had more than 5-6 hours sleep for ages, and I always wake up half way through the night and it takes me ages to get back to sleep and sometimes I just dont bother.

Jojo :)

Scottie:
Hi  :)

I haven't really found a way of dealing with the insomnia. I've always been a night owl and when my youngest daughter didn't sleep through the night for her first 3 and a half years I got only too accustomed to being up till 3 a.m. Twas a hard habit to break.

Its not total insomnia. I just seem to want to sleep at the wrong time. Overnight I toss and turn and wake up hot and bothered every two hours or so but then I sleep blissfully between 7.30 a.m. and 1 p.m. given half a chance.

I'm off work just now so that's how I've been sleeping. When I'm allowed to work again I guess I'll go back to being permanently fatigued.

Take care - Scottie  :)

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