Getting a good night’s rest can enhance your mood and help prevent health issues. Your body needs adequate time every day for restorative rest. Some sleep disorders, such as sleep apnea, insomnia, and restless leg syndrome, can make it harder to fall or stay asleep. This can lead to drowsiness during the day and negatively impact our mental health. Research also shows that a lack of sleep increases our risk for heart disease, obesity, and infections.

Women are one of the most sleep-troubled demographics in the United States (U.S.). This includes trends which highlight how adult women under the age of 50 are sleeping less or feeling less satisfied with their sleep and associated stress (Fioroni and Foy, 2024). Reasons for women’s poor sleep include a range of social, biological, and physiological factors. Social factors can include that many women often take on greater amounts of caregiving responsibilities within their households, including managing the “mental load,” the invisible, yet exhaustive, cognitive, and emotional labor involved in managing household tasks, family responsibilities and emotional well-being (Dean et al., 2021). While juggling the many facets of their personal and professional lives, many women often sacrifice sleep or experience trouble shutting off the constant to do lists in their minds while trying to fall sleep.

Biological and physiological factors also impact women’s sleep. Hormonal changes during menstruation, pregnancy, perimenopause, and menopause can all impact women’s sleep. This includes:

• Menstruation: For women with premenstrual symptoms or painful menstrual cramps, it is common to experience poorer sleep quality (Baker & Lee, 2018).
• Pregnancy: Sleep issues are common in pregnancy, especially in the third trimester with women waking up more often than usual because of increased urination needs, heartburn, leg cramps, general physical discomfort, and psychological distress (Won, 2015). Notably, the National Sleep Foundation’s Women and Sleep poll found the 78% of women reported more disturbed sleeping during pregnancy than any other time in their lives (NSF, 1998).
• Perimenopause & menopause: Hormone changes during perimenopause, including hot flashes —or “night sweats”.Night sweats become more frequent as a person nears menopause and may continue for years following one’s last menstrual period. However, even women who don’t experience hot flashes report that their sleep is worse during perimenopause. This may be due to the brain becoming more active while sleeping during this phase, which makes one sleep more lightly and experience poorer quality sleep (Swan Study, 2024).
• Postmenopausal women are also two to three times more likely to develop sleep apnea, a common and potentially serious breathing disorder, due to the loss of reproductive hormones like estrogen and progesterone (Jehan et al., 2016). To learn more about sleep problems and menopause, visit the National Institute on Aging (NIA).

Eight Recommendations for Better Sleep. Although you may not be able to control some of factors impacting your body and sleep experiences, there are some practical steps you can take to promote healthy sleep habits. This includes the following:

1. Sleep environment: Keep your bedroom dark, quiet, and cool. It may be useful to use a sleep mask to keep out light or ear plugs to reduce external noise.
2. Bedtime routine: Create and follow a nightly bedtime routine to help relax and wind down. This may include taking a warm bath, reading a book, or listening to music or a podcast.
3. Sleep habits: Always try and go to sleep when you initially feel sleepy. Try to wake up at the same time each morning.
4. Eating habits: Try not to not eat or drink very much within 3 hours of bedtime.
5. Nap considerations: Make sure to not take naps after 3:00 p.m.
6. Minimize caffeine and alcohol, especially late in the day: Do not drink caffeinated drinks late in the day or at night. Also, be careful drinking alcohol in the evenings as even a small amount can impact the quality of your sleep.
7. Do not exercise close to your bedtime: Exercise earlier in the day if possible. When you exercise too close to your bedtime, it can make it harder to sleep.
8. Avoid screens: Do not look at lighted screens like a laptop, television, or smartphone before bed.

For more tips on building healthy sleep habits, please visit the NIA’s website.

References

Baker FC, Lee KA. (2018). Menstrual Cycle Effects on Sleep. Sleep Med Clin;13(3):283-294. doi: 10.1016/j.jsmc.2018.04.002.

Dean, L., Churchill, B., & Ruppanner, L. (2021). The mental load: building a deeper theoretical understanding of how cognitive and emotional labor overload women and mothers. Community, Work & Family, 25(1), 13–29.

Fioroni, S., Foy, D. (2024, May 30). Americans Sleeping Less, More Stressed. Gallup News. 

Jehan, S., Auguste, E., Hussain, M., Pandi-Perumal, S.R., Brzezinski, A., Gupta, R., et al. (2016). Sleep and Premenstrual Syndrome. Journal of Sleep Medicine and Disorders; 3(5): 1061

Jehan S, Auguste E, Zizi F, Pandi-Perumal SR, Gupta R, Attarian H, Jean-Louis G, McFarlane SI. (2016) Obstructive Sleep Apnea: Women's Perspective. J Sleep Med Disord;3(6):1064.

Matthews KA, Kravitz HM, Lee L, Harlow SD, Bromberger JT, Joffe H, Hall MH. Does midlife aging impact women's sleep duration, continuity, and timing?: A longitudinal analysis from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation. (2020). Sleep;43(4). doi: 10.1093/sleep/zsz259.

National Sleep Foundation. (1998). Women and sleep. Arlington, VA: National Sleep Foundation.

Swan Study. (2024). Effects of Sleep Problems During Menopause. Swan Study.

Won CH. Sleeping for Two: The Great Paradox of Sleep in Pregnancy. (2015). J Clin Sleep Med. 11(6):593-4. doi: 10.5664/jcsm.4760.