Introduction

You’ve just gone to sleep after what feels like an eternity of tossing around, getting all tangled up in your sheets, thrown the doona to the ground, shouted expletives, woken your loved one up, or the dog is so fed up, they’ve gone to another room.

And then you are woken up feeling like you’ve been in a sauna that was cranked up to maximum.

And the bed feels wet. 

Shit! have I wet the bed?  No its not pee, its just sweat, the bed is wet and

then you check the alarm clock. 

Heeby bejongles, its only 11 oclock.

You’ve been asleep for a grand total of 7.5 minutes.

The cycle happens all over again, 

and then all over again, 

and you wonder how the heckfire you are going to get through this 

menopause thing.

Didn’t someone tell you the other day that they had menopause for 7 years. 

No way.

When is the world going to end?

You finally get to sleep again, and then the flaming alarm goes off. You trip over the duna on the floor trying to get to the toilet before you pee yourself, because lately it's been more difficult to hold your bladder.

Just made it and you start to pee and realise you had put the lid down on the toilet for some goodness forsaken reason, and now you got a grand old mess to clean up.

How the F are you going to get through the day with only 4 hours and 23 minutes sleep?

Is this going to happen tomorrow night too, and the next.

 You get up and your child or partner or flattie say, good morning to you and you  snap at them – what do you mean by that?

You realise this is not going to be a good day. 

All you want to do is get back into bed, but that pool of wet sheets is less than appealing, and if you do that, your life is going to fall apart.

This feels nothing like the joy Veet spoke about in her menopause podcast last week, and didn’t she say lack of sleep adds weight? You look at your stomach, and you can see it's grown 3 frigging centimetres! 

Does that all sound familiar? Or is that what you are really concerned about, entering into peri menopause and menopause?

In this podcast, I am going to share with you why your sleep is disrupted.

What practical things you can do. 

What unconventional things you can do. 

What foods you can eat to support you in this seeming nightmare.

What happens when we don’t get enough sleep 

This is a big one. 

Without enough sleep, 

irritability increases, 

you can’t do everything you planned to do the next day,

you can develop headaches and other problems,

leads to greater anxiety,

leads to weight gain.

Why sleep becomes disrupted

Oestrogen and progesterone regulate sleep, and as the production of this is disrupted in peri-menopause and stops in menopause, we can often struggle to get to sleep, stay asleep or end up waking up often.  

In addition, heightened anxiety and depression caused by menopause, can be disrupting to sleep.

Practical things to help with sleep during menopause. 

Keep what is coined on the internet, 

‘good hygiene’

Have a cool, darkened room. Wear a sleep mask and earplugs if you aren’t going to sleep through your alarm. Limit your screen time, etc. You know all those things – keep your phone turned off and in another room.

Then there is meditation. This can help too, as can regular daily exercise. Walking or doing 10 minutes exercise after dinner can also be fabulous.

Unconvential suggestions

There are all those things and then here are some more unconventional things I suggest.

Organise your life so that if you have a disrupted nights sleep, you can start work later than planned. If there are things you need to do early in the mornings, see if they can be delegated to someone else, just in case you have a bad night’s sleep.  If you can let your employer know you are menopausal, maybe things can be organised for you differently.

Go to bed super early. That way, if you are waking up regularly and not able to get to sleep for a while, you have more chance of getting more hours of sleep if you are in bed early. 

If you do wake up in the night and are tossing and turning, go for a walk around your house then sit up and meditate. More often than not, when most people meditate in the night, they fall asleep.

When you wake up in the night, don’t look at the clock. Just say to yourself, wow, that was a good long sleep. Yippee, I am going to get some more sleep now. How lucky am I? Trick your brain into thinking it is in a good mood and has had plenty of sleep. This will keep you from spiralling into a whole lot of negative thoughts.

If you can’t sleep and you are laying there for ages, try to say that’s o.k., my body is resting anyway, and it needs as much rest as my brain does. Laying awake in a lovely state of mind is much more restful than tossing around and getting all worked up and anxious that you are not sleeping.

Organise 15 to 20 minutes a day where you can do a yoga nidra meditation. Even though this is a non-sleep, deep rest meditation, I always fall asleep, and it is the very best short sleep, that is super rejuvenating, and really seems to help regulate hormones.  You can, of course, do longer than 20 minutes. There are all sorts of lengths.

How what you eat can help

Then, of course, there is what I am most concerned about with, because what we eat really does have a big impact on our menopausal journey.

It is so important to eat lots of protein.  I don’t mean inflammatory protein like meat, eggs and dairy.

But plant protein.

Even if you are not vegan, strive to have at least one of your meals a day eating plant based, but they need to be protein-rich meals. Listen to podcasts 2,3,4 and sign up for the complete protein chart.

Eat foods that are high in phytoestrogens, to help the body make oestrogen.

You can get the list by clicking here.

These are things that contain isothiocyanates, isoflavones, phenolic lipids, flavonoids, reveratol, monoterpenes, probiotics and tannins.

You can get the full list, but things like

raspberries, cherries, blueberries, peanuts, grapes, 

then legumes, soy 

cruciferous vegetables 

sprouts, sauerkraut miso, tempeh

onion, garlic

olives 

tomatoes 

potatoes 

Food that springs to mind – an Italian style bake with tomatoes, potatoes, onion garlic, grated tofu or lentils and pasta or rice and a creamy cauliflower bechemal.

Or a Southeast Asian summer, brown rice noodle salad with crispy tofu and a peanut ginger sauce. 

Or a salad, packed with leaves sprouts, olives, spring onions, blueberries, brown rice and lentils, or oven baked tempeh and a herby French dressing 

Or Salad Niçoise lends super well with quinoa and tofu.

Foods for sleep

When I compiled this list of foods that I am going to share with you, I had this crazy idea that I had to eat as many of these as I could for my dinner meal.  But  actually eating them throughout the day is better, as it helps regulate you through the day.

As I knew, white rice was great for sleep, but whenever I eat white rice or pasta for dinner, I sleep shit. But if I eat them in the day, I sleep super well. 

It’s good to make a diary of what you have eaten, so for the nights you have a bad night, see if there is a correlation.

Food containing Tryptophan (which assists in sleep)

Chickpeas 

Nuts – peanuts 

Prunes

Bananas 

Oats

Chocolate ( vegan and not containing too much 

sugar)

Foods containing lactacium – relaxes the body 

Lettuce 

Other foods proven to aid sleep 

Chamomile tea – binds receptors in the brain,  

thought to improve sleep

Kiwi fruit 

White rice  

Elephant in the room 

Before I mentioned earlier, to limit inflammatory foods like meat, dairy and eggs, 

another one for many people 

is alcohol – they have to give up alcohol 

and coffee, and for me all caffeine, which really felt like a big disaster,

anything with preservatives and sugar.

These may be hard to replace but you may want to give it a try.

Recipe

The recipe for this week is a real comfort food recipe.

I have added lots of phytoestrogen-rich foods, and foods good for sleep in it, which you can do to any recipe.

Mi Goreng

Balinese Rice 

INGREDIENTS

350g tofu cut thinly 

1 tsp black salt 

Sunflower oil 

1 large carrot cut small 

150g green beans cut small 

1 small red capsicum cut small 

1 small bunch broccoli 

2 big handfuls of kale 

4 spring onions cut small 

2 cloves garlic minced 

1 cup dried jasmine or basmati rice cooked the day before (will yield more than 1 cup – use it all)

Sauce 

3 tbsp of tamari 

1 tbsp chilli paste 

Garnish 

2 spring onions finely chopped

1 cucumber sliced 

1 tomato sliced

3 tbsp peanuts 

Extra chilli sauce

METHOD

1. Fry the tofu in sunflower oil and sprinkle on black salt. Fry until crispy.

2. Have the garnish all prepared.

3. Mix the sauce together.

4. Add oil to a wok or large frying pan, fry the onion and garlic for a few minutes.

5. Add the vegetables and cook for 5 minutes, or until soft. You may need to add a bit of water too. Add the rice and sauce and heat through.

6. Serve with the tofu and garnish. 

Sauce 

INGREDIENTS

1 shallot or 2 spring onions 

2 Birdseye chilli (optional) 

4 cloves garlic 

1 tbsp miso paste

2 tbsp oil

1 tsp salt 

1 tbsp water 

METHOD

Blend everything in a blender until smooth.

Cook in a frying pan for 3 to 5 minutes.

FCT 

Print out the phytoestrogen list and the food for sleep, and whenever you make something, see what you can add into your meals from the list.