Episode 6: Women and Sleep

This episode explores how different sleep looks for women especially due to unique biological changes throughout their lifetime. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello everyone, welcome to the Sleep Lab Stories. Here we talk everything sleep and of course more on sharing experiences that could be of great relevance to anyone else out there listening in regard to sleep and sleep disorders. If you're new here, thank you for choosing to spend this time with me here. And for those returning or who've been here before, welcome back and thanks for your support. I would like to bring to your attention that the podcast is now available in most uh streaming platforms, so check us out and subscribe and tune in there at your uh convenience. Today's episode focuses on sleep in women, and we are going to tackle a few things that are very specific to sleep in women. So, how does the sleep architecture change over time for women across different age and time in their lives? This is of course a very broad spectrum, but we will narrow down to the common sleep disorders and how to manage this. Women experience unique sleep challenges due to hormonal changes, reproductive life stages, care-giving responsibilities, and other higher, I mean the fact that women are also highly likely to have certain medical conditions and also mental health conditions. Research consistently shows that women report more sleep disturbances than men, yet these disorders are often underdiagnosed or misunderstood. But I guess this also has to do with the fact that a lot of medical textbooks still reference to men's body as a source of information on a lot of medical conditions. So, how does sleep change during a woman's life? A woman's sleep pattern are influenced by key life stages like menstrual cycles, pregnancy, and postpartum period, perimenopause and menopause, and of course aging. Hormonal fluctuations play a major role in regulating sleep, the circadian rhythm, mood, and body temperature. While women often report longer total sleep duration than men, they also experience higher rates of insomnia, breastlets, leg syndrome, depression, and anxiety-related sleep disorders, and sleep disturbances during pregnancy and menopause, of course, which are the unique biological circumstances, if I could call them like that, for women. So the common sleep disorders in women narrow down to insomnia, breastless leg syndrome, sleep disorders during pregnancy, and sleep disorders also during menopause and while eating. Some of these stages, like during pregnancy and uh during menopause, the sleep disorders are not yet specifically described because they are like overlapping. There could be more sleep, already known and defined sleep disorders coexisting, and of course, also other symptoms that are specific to these conditions, like during pregnancy, there is the gaining of weight which is associated with pregnancy, and it comes along with the sleep disorders like uh frequent awakenings or uh disrupted sleep and uh also obstructive sleep apnea, mostly coming or showing up in that remiser. So let's look at each a bit closer. And I'll start with insomnia. Insomnia is in rather the definition at the moment is difficulty waking, I mean falling asleep, or difficulty staying asleep, or waking too early, and this if it happens consistently at least three times a week and over three months. And this insomnia is reported to occur nearly as twice as often in women as in men. Women are more vulnerable to suffer from insomnia during premenstrual periods, pregnancy and postpartum, perimenopause and menopause, and times of increased stress or care-giving responsibilities which could be uh different happen at different times during the life of a woman. The other common condition, sleep uh disorder I mean, uh in women is restless leg syndrome. This is also more common, especially during pregnancy, and the symptoms include the urge to move legs, uncomfortable sensation in legs, daytime fatigue, and the symptoms are mostly worse at night, and at times lead to difficulty falling asleep. You can imagine if you have the urge to move around or to move your legs, yet sleep requires us to actually like stay calm. So this sensation always actually gets better. The urge and maybe the uh discomfort does get better when one is moving around, so that ends up maybe stealing the sleeping time or holding one back from falling asleep. The other sleep disorder in women, a common one, is the obstructive sleep apnea. This is often underdiagnosed in women because the symptoms may present differently than in men, and again, this uh becomes a problem because the definition given to a condition like this mostly references um the the type of diagnosis or definition that was done as per studies done on men's body many many years ago, and these unfortunately are what are still and on most textbooks and even scripts that are still used in medicine today. So this brings a problem to women because having the symptoms that uh women will show when they have a sleep apnea like snoring looks totally different like than what is described in the books or what a man would typically show. A symptom like snoring for women does not necessarily have to be the loud, the typical loud sound we know in men, but at times already just breathing like already is defined as snoring, so that makes it a bit difficult to diagnose or to rate it, let me say, fairly when a woman presents with uh complaints or symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea, and yet when they do a test or when they have a sleep study, most of the time it will show as if they're clear or their condition is mild. Yeah, so these calls to action actually that there needs to be more to be done on this, specifically on this area when it comes to obstructive sleep apnea in women. And I'm sure a lot is already been done, but the implementation is not yet there. So, uh for anyone out there involved, I hope this also makes sense that the studies or the campaigns going on out there to change some of these um the rules for women should be done as soon as possible. The other more common sleep disorder in women are the sleep disturbances during pregnancy, menopause and perimonopause. I have just categorized these together right now because these are the unique biological experiences for women which will either mostly show up with other accompanying symptoms, or actually, mostly there are more than one symptoms uh uh a woman would be experiencing when they are pregnant, they are going through menopause or perimenopause, and the fact that these symptoms usually coexist makes it again difficult to get treatment because in most cases the focus is usually on the main condition, like maybe pregnancy. So the conditions or rather the a pregnant woman will be treated, the pregnancy will be checked, there'll be checkup around the pregnancy, is the baby okay, is everything the hormones, pregnancy hormones, but underlying conditions like sleep disorders will be ignored. That I have experienced it myself, and I've also experienced many other women experience that that there will be no treatment offered while they go through pregnancy or menopause because the main focus will be on the pregnancy itself, yeah. And that brings us to the next segment, which is when should one seek help, and when when is the right time to get um the medical intervention? I usually say the more one knows about something, the less they need to do about that thing. That's very vaguely put, but in when I put it back into a sleep disorder or medical conditions like uh the ones I've already mentioned, the more one knows about what is going on in their body, the faster also they get to the solution, and they will avoid going through many specialists or many steps before knowing actually what goes. So consider evaluation if any of these conditions persist over a certain period of time. Actually, but the persistency is what I can't even give it a timeline, but I I can say if you feel like at least three times a week you're feeling something like insomnia, you you can't get to sleep well, and this happens over three months. This should be a call for action, and the best way to do this is document as soon as you feel like something is not right, or the the quality of your sleep is not up to the standard you expect it to be, or is affecting your daytime functions. This already means that you need to already seek intervention. If the more you wait mostly, the more also other things could overlap and make this a shadow. So the duration document as how often you feel any of the symptoms, if you feel excessively tired during the day, also that's a sign that your your symptoms could have already been spilling over to your daytime um fitness, or rather, how yeah, how well you feel during the day. If your breathing is loud, or your partner or use yourself, you notice to have breathing pauses. This is actually usually difficult to notice, but mostly it would be great if you get feedback from people who've watched you sleep or or your partner mostly, if they have noticed any pauses in breath, they could time this, they could film this, but of course, with your consent, and then you will get to see that um how long it doesn't even need to be. Of course, they are short pauses in sleep, but if the pauses go uh over 10 seconds and repeatedly at night, that should already be a reason to get a medical intervention. Frequent sleep disruptions should also be a sign if you get to wake up very frequently at night for whichever reason, or if you wouldn't even be remembering why you woke up, if you'd be waking up to go to the bathroom or to drink something or to eat, any other reason that could be making your sleep not continuous should make you seek medical attention. Another reason mood changes if you experience mood changes and attention deficiency that you could be linking to poor sleep, that could also be a sign that your the sleep the condition you have in sleep or the sleep disorder is already spilling spilling into your cognitive capabilities. So that's uh um one my last point on when to seek medical attention. My take-home message, especially for women, and also to ensure that you promote uh healthy sleep, maintain consistent sleep and wake times. This I keep repeating actually on any other thing, anytime I have the chance to speak about improving and promoting healthy sleep. This is usually one of my points. Document any unique um observations in your sleep, document how long they happen, if it's about the breathing poses, how long does it happen, how frequent, and at what point, if there's any other thing that is uh happening in your life, or then you should be able to if if you can to document what happens alongside when any of these uh symptoms or occurrences happen. My other takeaway message is manage stress and mental health and don't be ashamed to ask for help. Most of the time, women especially fall into stress because they they feel that it's their responsibility to do certain things, and then they don't ask for help from professionals or even family members. So do not be ashamed to ask for help if you're feeling overwhelmed or if you feel that a certain thing is beyond your control and you can you alone cannot handle it. My other point limit evening screen exposure. This is not only an important point for women, but it's also a general point that can help improve sleep quality, and especially in the era we are currently living in where smartphones, tablets, phones, I mean uh t television computers, we almost all of us have access to something that is a screen that is exposing us to blue light, and at times also we we could not be we are not self-disciplined enough to know when not to be using it. Using a screen at so much and especially up to bedtime has been proven to cause a lot of disturbances in the sleep architecture. So if you can control this or is something within your capacity to check, you need to check on that at least an hour before bedtime, you should be free from all the screen activity. Yeah, regular physical activity. Also, I can't emphasize this enough. We get so drawn back into sitting and not moving our bodies a lot. This causes not only weight gain or also mental fog that will at the end of the day fall into our sleep time. So if you didn't get time to move during the day, move from the place you were seated the whole day, or move from the room you've been seated the whole day, make it a point of at least moving your body, at least short walks or even short movements around the house, mostly though in the fresh air, uh the the exposing yourself to fresh air daily is one of the best things you could do to yourself. It not only will that make you move your body, but also the breathing in and out will help your body, and uh the things like sleep, exposing yourself to natural light, help induce sleep well at night. Monitor caffeine and alcohol intake. This is also a very common tip given almost, or rather, a very old but common tip as well, but it still holds so much sense, even in our age and era. Too much alcohol consumption or caffeine consumption, especially in the evening, leads to the disruption of our sleep architecture, and of course, in long in the long run, the quality of sleep. And the last but not least, create a comfortable sleep environment. Make sure that the place you're sleeping, the area you're sleeping in is free of order that could be irritating or that could disturb one sleep and that could be making you not comfortable or or well rested, and also that the place should not be like there should not be a lot of like light and noise that are not that would be making you um distracted at night or that could be waking you up from your sleep. That's it for today. And uh on closing, I would like to say that recognizing most of these sleep orders, sleep disorders early allows for effective treatment and improved quality of life. So the earlier you get all the on your hands on the proper treatment or the proper uh medical advice for any of the sleep order disorders you could have noticed, the better you are giving your yourself a good better quality of life. So I would encourage anyone who could be going through this or who could be knowing that uh they are not they're currently not satisfied with the quality of their sleep not to hesitate. Mostly you can speak to your uh general practitioner or your family doctor, and there are also currently a lot of sleep specialists. If you can't find one around where you live, you can hop online. There are a lot of specialists also offering online uh consultations, and maybe they can refer you to maybe colleagues of theirs that they know maybe around where you are. Don't suffer in silence because you can't find someone around your place. Make use of technology, make use of whatever you have in your hand, your phone, do the recordings, document your symptoms and your experiences. And until you get the right treatment, do not give up on yourself and do not think that you're crazy or that whatever you could be feeling is not valid. Most of the time, that which you feel, if you really feel that your sleep is not up to the quality you expect it to be, you're right, and you need you deserve to be given the right medical attention. That's it from for me today, and until next time, take care and thanks again for tuning in.