Hi there it's Matt here and welcome back to the podcast. Today we're going to

speak about sleep and menopause. Menopause as you may know is a natural biological process and it is marked by the

cessation of menstruation and the end of reproductive capacity. It typically occurs in

women between the age of spending on the data somewhere between 45 and 55 and it brings with it a range of

physical and emotional symptoms. One of the most significant and impactful of these symptoms is disrupted sleep. Today we're going to take a

deep dive into understanding the relationship between menopause and sleep, its implications, the underlying mechanisms, and

some of the strategies to manage these issues.

Let's start with how common sleep problems are in menopause. Well, whether you look at

survey data, things like the survey done by the National Sleep Foundation in 2007 or if you look at scientific data

ranging from community surveys to clinical studies of insomnia in these

populations or you look at larger retrospective or even

prospective population-based studies of menopause symptoms. What you find is

that somewhere between 30 to 40 percent of women will report

sleep difficulties during that time period. Whether that number is actually

significantly larger, it doesn't really matter because what we know is that the burden is non-trivial.

Imagine that one out of every three women that you pass on the street going

through menopause is struggling with getting anything like a good

consistent night of sleep. It is an undeniable and it's a pressing issue.

So why does it happen? What are the physiological reasons underlying sleep disruption in menopause?

For those who are struggling with sleep,

one recommendation I've offered in the past is meditation.

Now I was a complete skeptic at first.

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