How can you deal with menopausal insomnia naturally?
Let’s talk about it.
Insomnia means that you’re not able to sleep.
Menopausal women suffer from a couple patterns of insomnia. One is the inability to fall asleep. And one is waking up in the middle of the night. In perimenopause, having trouble falling asleep is common because the lowering levels of progesterone decrease the amount of GABA that your brain produces to calm itself down, so it’s hard to fall asleep. As perimenopause progresses into menopause, the insomnia pattern moves more towards waking up in the middle of the night. Hypothalamic dysregulation of temperature control, can cause hot flashes and night sweats in the middle of night, and also a decrease in melatonin because of the increase in body heat.
#1: Support Your Hypothalamus
The number one way to deal with menopause insomnia naturally, is to support your hypothalamus with Sacred Seven® amino acids and/or Genesis Gold®. Sacred Seven® amino acids are particularly effective at dealing with menopausal insomnia by helping induce deeper sleep.
Now both supplements are taken in the morning to help reset your hypothalamic circadian rhythm so you have a more normal sleep cycle.
#2: Room Temperature
Number two, be sure that your room temperature is between 60 and 67 degrees, any hotter and it’s very difficult to make enough melatonin to stay asleep.
#3: Lights Off
Number three, make sure your lights are off so you’re sleeping in the complete dark, and decrease your screen time after dusk to help your pineal make enough melatonin.If you need to have more supplemental support, taking GABA can help induce sleep. Liquid forms of GABA are fast-acting. Melatonin, especially sustained release, can help keep you asleep. I recommend GABA or melatonin for up to three weeks to reset your sleep cycle so your body doesn’t become dependent on these exogenous hormones.
Studies have shown that women who wake up in the middle of the night with hot flashes or night sweats inducing their insomnia, can actually decrease these with a particular contraction/relaxation exercise. If done before falling asleep and in the middle of the night if needed, women were more likely to be able to fall back to sleep and less likely to wake up in the first place.
If you’d like access to the contraction/relaxation exercise, please join us in our free Hormone Reboot Training.
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Why does menopause cause insomnia?
Menopausal insomnia is driven by hormonal changes that disrupt the neurochemical and thermoregulatory systems the hypothalamus uses to govern sleep. The two most common patterns correspond to different hormonal mechanisms. Difficulty falling asleep is most prevalent in perimenopause, when declining progesterone reduces the brain’s production of GABA — the primary inhibitory neurotransmitter that quiets neural activity and allows the brain to transition into sleep. Without adequate GABA, the nervous system stays activated past the point where sleep should begin. Waking in the middle of the night becomes more common as menopause progresses, driven by hypothalamic thermoregulatory dysregulation that triggers hot flashes and night sweats during sleep, and by the decline in melatonin production that results from low estrogen reducing serotonin — melatonin’s direct precursor.
What is the connection between progesterone and sleep?
Progesterone has a direct sedative effect on the brain through its conversion to allopregnanolone, a neurosteroid that acts on GABA-A receptors — the same receptors targeted by sleep medications like benzodiazepines. When progesterone is adequate, this GABA enhancement promotes a calm, relaxed transition into sleep and supports the deep slow-wave sleep phases where physical restoration and growth hormone secretion occur. As progesterone declines in perimenopause, GABA tone drops, the nervous system becomes more reactive to stress and stimulation in the evening hours, and falling asleep — particularly for women who are already running high cortisol from daily demands — becomes progressively more difficult. This is why progesterone support is often the most targeted intervention for the falling-asleep pattern of perimenopausal insomnia.
Why do menopausal women wake up at 2 or 3 AM?
The 2–4 AM waking pattern common in menopause and perimenopause has two overlapping causes. The first is hypothalamic thermoregulatory dysfunction — the narrowing of the thermoneutral zone that makes the sleeping body more likely to respond to minor temperature fluctuations with heat-dissipation responses (hot flashes and night sweats) that disrupt sleep. The second is HPA axis dysregulation producing a cortisol surge at the wrong phase of the circadian cycle. Cortisol normally reaches its lowest point around midnight and begins rising toward the morning peak, but in women with adrenal dysregulation this curve can shift or spike prematurely in the early morning hours — producing wakefulness, racing thoughts, and difficulty returning to sleep. The hypothalamus governs both the thermoregulatory zone and the cortisol circadian rhythm, which is why addressing hypothalamic function is the most upstream approach for this specific sleep pattern.
How does estrogen affect melatonin and sleep?
Estrogen supports melatonin production through the serotonin pathway — estrogen is required for the synthesis of serotonin, which is then converted to melatonin by the pineal gland in response to darkness. When estrogen declines, serotonin production decreases, and the pineal gland has less substrate available to produce adequate melatonin. The result is reduced melatonin output at night, which impairs sleep onset, shortens total sleep duration, and reduces the proportion of restorative deep sleep and REM sleep. Estrogen also helps maintain the sensitivity of the hypothalamic thermoregulatory center, and its decline is directly responsible for the temperature dysregulation during sleep that compounds the melatonin insufficiency. Both pathways converge on the same outcome — fragmented, non-restorative sleep that worsens as estrogen continues to fall.
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