The Sleep Crisis in Menopause: Insomnia, Sleep Apnea & Solutions

Poor sleep during perimenopause and menopause isn't just exhausting—it's linked to increased cardiovascular disease risk, depression, anxiety, weight gain, cognitive decline, and reduced quality of life. Yet for decades, women's sleep complaints have been minimized, dismissed, or blamed on just getting older. In this episode, Dr. Mary Claire Haver sits down with board-certified sleep medicine specialist Dr. Andrea Matsumura to unpack what's really happening to women's sleep during the menopause transition and what we can actually do about it. Dr. Matsumura completed her medical degree at the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio and her internal medicine residency in Portland, Oregon before returning to Oregon Health & Science University for a fellowship in sleep medicine, where she discovered the critical connection between women's hormones and sleep disorders. Guest links: Dr. Andrea Matsumura https://www.instagram.com/drandreamatsumura/?hl=en (Instagram) Dr. Andrea Matsumura https://www.facebook.com/drea007/ (Facebook) Dr. Andrea Matsumura https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreamatsumuramd (LinkedIn) Dr. Andrea Matsumura https://andreamatsumuramd.com/ The D. R. E. A. M. Sleep Method: A Midlife Woman’s Guide to Restoring Rest https://andreamatsumuramd.com/the-dream-sleep-method-a-midlife-womans-guide-to-restoring-rest/ Articles Worldwide estimation of restless legs syndrome: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prevalence in the general adult population https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jsr.13783 (Journal of Sleep Research) Association Between Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Cardiovascular Risk: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies https://www.mdpi.com/1648-9144/61/11/1988 (Medicina) Why sleep apnea deserves priority in public health: a call to action https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12311335/ (European Journal of Public Health) Poor Quality Control of Over-the-Counter Melatonin: What They Say Is Often Not What You Get https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.6434 (Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine) Quantity of Melatonin and CBD in Melatonin Gummies Sold in the US https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2804077 (JAMA) Sleep disorders impact hormonal regulation: unravelling the relationship among sleep disorders, hormones and metabolic diseases https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13098-025-01871-w (Diabetology & Metabolic Syndrome) Comorbid Insomnia and Obstructive Sleep Apnea (COMISA): Current Concepts of Patient Management https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/17/9248 (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health) Chronobiological perspectives: Association between meal timing and sleep quality https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0308172 (PLOS One) Effects of red light on sleep inertia https://www.dovepress.com/article/download/45553 (Nature and Science of Sleep) Other Resources Seven or more hours of sleep per night: A health necessity for adults https://aasm.org/seven-or-more-hours-of-sleep-per-night-a-health-necessity-for-adults/ (American Academy of Sleep Medicine) ...

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Why do you think women's sleep complaints are so frequently minimized?

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it goes back to, and this is why I do what I do. I am really tired of the normalization of women's suffering in society. That is exactly why I'm doing what I'm doing. Because we get told from a very young age that our baseline for suffering is higher. We should just suffer through those horrendous menstrual periods that we, that we should be anemic. It's okay, you know, sorry, you're losing a lot of blood. When, if you have children, well, you're just not going to get enough sleep. Well, you have to take care of somebody else. There is mental load in the working environment, in your home environment. We are taught that we are supposed to suffer more.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  And then you hit menopause, you hit midlife, and then you become invisible. And then you, you're supposed to suffer. Well, you know, you don't have hormones now. It's just the way it is.

• 1:10Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  The views and opinions expressed on UnPaused are those of the talent and guests alone, and are provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. No part of this podcast or any related materials are intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

• 1:28Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Today's guest is someone I've known and trusted for more than a decade, and one of the most important clinicians in my own education as a menopause specialist. Dr. Andrea Matsumura is a board-certified sleep medicine specialist who's been shaping the field of women's sleep health long before most of the medical community even recognized how profoundly sleep changes during the menopause transition. When the vast majority of my own patients were coming to me exhausted, wired, anxious, and unable to sleep through the night, Andrea was the first person I turned to. Quite literally, I was taught almost nothing about sleep in medical school or residency. I knew women stopped sleeping during menopause. I knew the complaints were universal,

• 2:13Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  but I didn't understand the mechanisms, the physiology, or the stakes. Andrea is the one who opened that door for me. She helped me understand why even asymptomatic women on hormone therapy can still struggle.

• 2:28Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  She walked me through the neuroendocrine chaos of perimenopause. And when I began digging into the research myself, I was stunned by what I found. Poor sleep is associated with increased cardiovascular risk, depression, anxiety, weight gain, obesity, impaired cognition, and reduced quality of life. The girls are not sleeping, and it's costing them dearly. Andrea has spent her career helping patients reclaim their nights, their energy, their mental health, and their lives. She blends clinical wisdom with evidence-based clarity, and she teaches in a way that makes the science finally make sense. When I decided to develop a sleep supplement for my community, she is the person I trusted to partner with.

• 3:11Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Her guidance shaped everything from the science, to the formulation, to the practical strategies women can use to finally rest again. Andrea is an extraordinary clinician, a generous educator, and a quiet force behind the scenes who has changed countless lives, including mine. I am so grateful to have her here today to help us understand what is really happening to women's sleep during perimenopause and menopause, and what we can do about it. I'm Dr. Mary Claire Haver, a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist and certified menopause practitioner. I'm also an adjunct professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Welcome to UnPaused, the podcast where we cut through the silence and talk about what

• 3:55Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  it really takes for women to thrive in the second half of life.

• 4:08Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So, Dr. Matsumura, welcome to UnPaused.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 4:13Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I want you to tell me a little bit about where you grew up.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Tell us about your background. All right. Well, I grew up with my mom living in my grandparents' house. My mom was a teenager when she had me, so she was really young, and we grew up together. And I grew up in San Antonio, Texas.

• 4:31Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And what drew you to medicine?

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Well, that's a personal story that I don't get to share that often, and it's taken me a while to kind of wrap my head around it. But my mom and I were both on Medicaid when I was little, and I had a lot of infections, like allergies, stuff like that. And It was, it was really hard because we'd go to the ER and we were really treated like second-class citizens. It was a really tough time. And I realized one day, I guess I was about five or six, I had a June bug fly in my ear. And it got stuck on the tympanic membrane and on the eardrum.

• 5:13Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  That would be the eardrum, to our listeners, yeah.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  And I remember going to the ER, because, I mean, it's stuck on your eardrum, it hurts, right? And the ER doc, who's probably a lovely resident, like we've all been, said, "Well, how many roaches do you have in your house?" And my mom was mortified. And she said, "We don't have roaches in our house." And they ended up drowning the bug that was in my ear, taking it out and said, "Huh, it's a June bug. Oh, well." And I remember at that point in my life, I said, "I need to not only take care of me, but take care of my family. And I need to take care of all of the people who don't have a voice and who

• 6:00Speaker 01

  are muffled and silenced and dismissed, because this is a terrible experience." And I was really little. So from that point on, I made it my mission to do really well in every science class. So I ended up working on getting my PhD in molecular biology, and it was a snooze fest.

• 6:21Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Wet bench research is pretty, not for everyone.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  It's, it's slow. And so I ended up finishing that out, getting my masters, and I got into medical school. And then I was off to the races.

• 6:33Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  When were you drawn to sleep? That was later.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I was practicing primary care and seeing tons of patients and doing hospital work and outpatient work. And nobody can sleep.

• 6:47Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  The girls, I say this all the time.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 6:49Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  The girls are not sleeping.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 6:51Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  They're not sleeping. All of my patients. I mean, it's the rare patient who's like, "Nah, man. I go to bed, like, you know, sleep like a rock, get up, I feel refreshed." Like, that is so rare in my practice. So keep going.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, the girls aren't sleeping, and it's literally breaking our hearts and our brains. So we gotta do something about it.

• 7:09Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Okay.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  But I got into sleep because nobody could sleep, but it's an afterthought. So after we were done talking about all of the chronic medical conditions, it was this, oh, yeah, can I get something for sleep? I'm not getting enough sleep. So then I started doing more reading about sleep and how important it is. And I thought to myself, wait a minute, I didn't get taught this at all in medical.

• 7:34Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I received nothing about sleep.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Nothing in residency. I was just learning about obstructive sleep apnea and realized, oh, I am missing tons of people who have sleep apnea and tons of people have insomnia. And what's going on here? So then, at that point, I left my practice and I went back to school to study sleep. And I did a fellowship in sleep medicine.

• 7:58Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What do you do in a sleep medicine fellowship?

• 8:00Speaker 01

  There are over 70 different sleep disorders. The one that everybody knows about is obstructive sleep apnea. The one that everybody lives with is insomnia. And I learned that sleep is truly our core pillar of health. That's why I call it a vital sign.

• 8:17Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Sleep problems are a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, like recognized as a high risk factor. I just happened to interview yesterday two Alzheimer specialists, and they both were talking about how critical sleep is for cognitive decline. So it's pretty amazing. I never learned any of that.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  100%. I mean, everything that we talk about, exercise, nutrition, how medications work, how our hormones work. If we are not getting the quality sleep, and I like to focus on quality, if we are not getting the quality, not just the quantity of sleep, then everything is off, it's off bets. I mean, it's just not going to function as well as it should if we are not getting that foundation set correctly.

• 9:02Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What is insomnia?

• 9:03Speaker 01

  By definition, insomnia is the inability to get to sleep and/or stay asleep. And you feel like you're, you did not get enough sleep when you wake up for the day.

• 9:14Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And what percentage of the population has this?

• 9:17Speaker 01

  So at any given time, at least, I would say 50%, that's what data says, will have some form of insomnia that's short-lived. But up to 30% of the population will have chronic insomnia. And chronic insomnia is, again, by definition, the inability to get to sleep and/or stay asleep at least three times a week for at least three months.

• 9:40Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So you're doing your sleep medicine fellowship. Were you noticing differences between males and females?

• 9:47Speaker 01

  At that point, I was at the VA. There's a lot of guys at the VA. So wasn't seeing a whole bunch of women. And we really didn't focus on women's health. So, you know, every single screening tool is really focused on men's health. A lot of the data, I won't say all of the data, but much of the data is focused on population health around men. So I really didn't start to see the connection between women's health and sleep until I actually started going out and practicing sleep medicine.

• 10:20Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So explain to our listeners, what does a sleep medicine specialist do? And how would you find one? Like, like, you know? This sounds amazing, but I, you're the first sleep medicine specialist I've ever met in my life. So, and I've practiced medicine for a long time.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  If you're having trouble sleeping, if you're snoring, if you can't get to sleep or stay asleep, a lot of times, a primary care doctor will be referring you to someone like me. If somebody has a neuromuscular condition, so anybody who's got any type of neuromuscular condition, like a common one is multiple sclerosis, people will come and see me. If you have an autoimmune disorder, people will come and see me. Women who are pregnant will come and see me because we know that pregnancy, if you have sleep apnea, you're at higher risk for all sorts of potential complications.

• 11:15Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What is sleep apnea?

• 11:16Speaker 01

  It's basically an oxygen deprivation state. So typically, it's obstructive, although there are seven different types of central sleep apnea. But the one that everybody knows about is obstructive sleep apnea. And that is when the back of the throat closes off those soft tissues and you're unable to oxygenate the rest of your body.

• 11:38Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And is that snoring, what snoring is?

• 11:41Speaker 01

  So snoring is a common symptom, but it is not a common symptom in women.

• 11:47Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  With sleep apnea. So you can have sleep apnea and not snore?

• 11:50Speaker 01

  You can have sleep apnea and not snore.

• 11:53Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  How would you know you had it?

• 11:54Speaker 01

  You don't always know you have it. Even when people are snoring and somebody next to them that is sleeping with them in their bed says, hey, you know, you stop breathing, I'm elbowing you, I'm waking you up. Sometimes even that person says, there's no way I have sleep apnea. So you don't always know that you have it.

• 12:15Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So you start your sleep medicine practice. I know you're doing a lot of sleep studies at the time. That's when we were becoming friends.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:22Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What is a sleep study?

• 12:24Speaker 01

  So a sleep study or a polysomnogram is when we take a look at all of the different stages of sleep. So you have all these little stickies on your head that are, it's an encephalogram. We're looking at the different stages of sleep. When you're awake, we have typically three breathing channels that we're looking at for respiratory effort and oxygenation. We're looking at your heart rate, your heart rhythm and movement. A home sleep study is modified. It doesn't look at all of the brainwaves, but it is generally capturing all of the breathing channels.

• 12:57Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So you're out there, living your best life. When did you start noticing the girls were different than the boys?

• 13:05Speaker 01

  So as soon as I started my sleep medicine practice, I noticed that women were coming in. You could tell that somebody had said, I don't know what to do. So, and you're not sleeping, so I'll send you to the sleep doctor. And many times, women would come in saying, I just don't feel right. And common, a common phrase would- Be, you know, I don't know if I'm depressed because I'm sleepy or I'm sleepy because I'm depressed. Oftentimes it was women in midlife and I was in midlife and I was starting to to notice that there were subtle changes in my sleep. So this is me, Andrea, I can sleep anywhere, anytime, anyplace, and all of a sudden I'm having middle of the night awakenings.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  And I'm thinking, what is going on? And then I also started having myself irregular periods and so I started asking women these questions. And word gets around fast, so then everybody that was getting an appointment with me was a woman. And then I kind of

• 14:08Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  The Women's Whisper Network.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Became the expert in women's health and sleep. And so then I started digging in and realizing there is a huge connection and we are getting dismissed. And there is no great screening tool to help us identify women who are having trouble sleeping, who might have sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, chronic insomnia. It's like this perfect storm because that's when our hormones are shifting and it the explosion around cardiovascular and neurocognitive issues kind of rears its its ugly head for us.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  And sleep can be that that hinge that either makes it or breaks it in terms of enabling us to help ourselves around cardiovascular health, around neurocognitive function.

• 15:05Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So let's go big picture.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:07Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Why is sleep such a critical piece here for overall health?

• 15:12Speaker 01

  It's like your CEO. It's for your body. So everything hinges on our ability to get into those sleep stages. So we need to have deep sleep. We need to have REM sleep in order for us to kind of clean all the waste products out of our brain, for all of our hormones to function in the pattern that it needs to function in, to continue to support our circadian rhythm, because every single cell runs on its on a circadian rhythm. And the master one is the the clock genes that are in the brain.

• 15:48Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  The what genes?

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Clock genes.

• 15:49Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What are those?

• 15:50Speaker 01

  We've got clock genes in the hypothalamus of the brain. We're born with them and they are the pacemaker of the circadian rhythm for all of the other cells in our body to function.

• 16:04Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  We know that, you know, data is showing that poor sleep is increasing the risk, as you said, depression, cardiovascular disease, diabetes. But talk to me about the women. Why is this so important for them?

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Well, because we have the same risk factors. Once we hit midlife, when we're in menopause, and we have this delay in our diagnosis. And that sets us up for, we know that cardiovascular health is so important. It's the number one issue.

• 16:37Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  You know, most women think if you ask them on the street that the number one killer of women is breast cancer. What is the number one killer of women?

• 16:44Speaker 01

  It is heart attacks.

• 16:45Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And they just feel like that's bad luck.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  I know, it's not. And it's so intimately involved in our ability to get good sleep because we know that when people have chronic insomnia and it goes untreated and we don't try to treat it, that you have higher cardiovascular risk.

• 17:04Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  You've quoted that sleep is foundational. But before we talk about fixing it, which we will, can you tell me what restorative sleep is? You know, there's different kinds of sleep. And you briefly talked about sleep stages. So I'd love to dig in here as well.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Okay. Restorative sleep is when you wake up feeling refreshed. You wake up and you can remember words, connect the dots. You don't have brain fog.

• 17:29Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I call it the rainbow and the birds chirping.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  You don't feel dysregulated. You're looking forward to your day. That's what good sleep feels like. As opposed to when you wake up and you say, oh, my gosh, I only slept a few hours. I don't know if I'm going to make it through the day.

• 17:46Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So what are the sleep stages you briefly talked about?

• 17:49Speaker 01

  So there's four sleep stages. So stage one is that light sleep. A lot of people will think that they didn't get any sleep at all, but they may have been hovering in stage one and stage two. Stage two is when your body's more or less preparing for the deeper stages of sleep. And fun fact, stage two is what we spend the most time in. So a little word about. Wearables or tracking devices, that light sleep is, stage two is in that light sleep. So a lot of people will think, gosh, I have so much light sleep, but you're supposed to have a lot of stage two sleep. And then there's stage three sleep, which is our deep sleep or slow wave sleep.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  And that's really the big, the big stage where you have all of the body restoring itself, all the physical restoration. And then REM sleep is when we're dreaming. And dream sleep is really important because that is when we're doing a lot of emotional consolidation. That's that emotional regulation piece. Some memory consolidation also happens during REM sleep.

• 18:55Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So I wear a tracker. And, you know, I used to be obsessed, my husband and I would, you know, Chris and I would wake up in the morning and be like, what'd you get? You know, for our scores, because not like I'm so competitive. And so I, according to Aura, I'm a much better sleeper than my husband. But, you know, what I never understood were the, the different phases and how much time I spend. Most of my deep sleep is early in the night, in the first half of my sleep. Is that normal?

• 19:20Speaker 01

  That is normal. So that deep sleep or slow wave sleep, we're supposed to get in that first one third of the night. And then REM sleep is usually in the last half of the night. So we, you know, there's a whole method to the madness, if you will.

• 19:37Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah, and we're fluctuating in and out. Why?

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're cycling.

• 19:40Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Fascinating, why?

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Your, your brain goes through these different cycles to kind of clean the brain out and it's kind of like a dishwasher, right?

• 19:48Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  So it keeps cycling through so that it's cleaning out all the waste products of the brain and developing and setting the stage, kind of cleaning the slate so that you can wake up refreshed in the morning.

• 20:01Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  We had Louisa Nicola on and she talked about the microglia, the small cells, and they shrink during deep sleep. And the fluids start pumping through because they can get around and that's cleaning.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  That's cleaning it out. That's usually, that's usually in slow wave sleep.

• 20:17Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What is the recommended time?

• 20:18Speaker 01

  So the American Academy of Sleep Medicine says that everybody should sleep seven to nine hours. And everybody kind of knows their sweet spot, but there is some data coming out that all is not lost if you're not sleeping seven hours. That really, let's, let's focus on the quality and not just the quantity.

• 20:37Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What does that mean?

• 20:38Speaker 01

  So quality-

• 20:39Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  If you're not wearing a tracker, how would you know?

• 20:41Speaker 01

  So, we know ourselves better than any tracker. So, I always tell folks, please ask yourself first, before you wake up, how you feel. Before you start looking at your data, because it primes people. So you, if you're not thinking about it, or you might say, "Hey, I got pretty good sleep," and then you look at your data and you say, "Oh, my gosh, I got horrible sleep." And then you really wake up for the rest of the day with this perception that you're not getting good sleep. And that's not always true. The trackers are, they're good, but they're not diagnostic tools. So, really trust yourself first.

• 21:22Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Has anybody come to your office, you know, because of a tracker?

• 21:26Speaker 01

  All the time.

• 21:27Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Uh, good and bad? Like, what would be a positive outcome of a tracker for you?

• 21:30Speaker 01

  Positive outcome of a tracker is when somebody notices a trend, uh, that something has shifted, and it's consistently shifted.

• 21:40Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Okay.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  And then that's a window for us to then use some diagnostics to kind of figure out, like a sleep study, or kind of dig deeper, "Hey, what's really going on with, with your sleep?" But most people come in because they say, you know, "My oxygen saturation is going down for five seconds here or there," you know? Great. Newsflash, that's not abnormal, you know?

• 22:04Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  But when should you be concerned about? Because your oxygen saturation, should you be concerned about that ever?

• 22:09Speaker 01

  If it's consistently low, and again, these are not as accurate, so if it's consistently low, and you notice that it's firing off a whole bunch, and it's telling you, "Hey, I think something's going on here," then that's when you should, you should go in to get evaluated. But even my tracker will say that occasionally I have low oxygen saturations, but I know that I don't have sleep apnea because I test myself. And it's very intermittent, but if you see like a sustained window, and for women, this is important because women will often have REM-related sleep abnormal breathing. So they will have REM-related obstructive sleep apnea, meaning that-

• 22:55Speaker 01

  They pretty much don't have what we call obstructive sleep apnea and all of the other stages of sleep, but during dream sleep is when they actually start to have low oxygen saturations, some hypoventilation where you cannot oxygenate well. And that is, that could show up on a tracker where you have a little window of time where you were consistently having low oxygen saturations.

• 23:22Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Okay. Talk about hormones and their role in sleep regulation. So we're talking about sex hormones or, you know, the PET hormone.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Yep. When we think about estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, so estrogen is really helping us with our thermoregulation, with our temperature control. It also helps with sleep spindle production, which is part of stage two of sleep. It also then helps with REM sleep. Progesterone is really about, it's got a lot of what we call GABA, GABAergic potential. So it really helps calm the brain. It also helps to support the structures at the back of the throat. So progesterone helps with supporting the airway while we're sleeping. And then testosterone is really helping with that deep sleep. So, and sustaining sleep.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  So those are, those are kind of the big components of how these sex steroids really affect sleep.

• 24:23Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  This year at the Menopause Society, you were there, right?

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 24:26Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And the incoming president is a psychiatrist.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 24:30Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And he did a presentation on sleep. And at the end, I watched it remotely. And I was very surprised to hear him say, and I may be quoting him incorrectly, at the end of the day, it was like, do not recommend progesterone for sleep. Were you surprised by that?

• 24:45Speaker 01

  I, so I was-

• 24:46Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What does the evidence say?

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Yes. So I was surprised by that. I think what he was trying to say, and I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt because I didn't get a chance to snag him and say, hey, hey, what's going on here? There isn't any data that says that progesterone is curative for, let's say- Obstructive sleep apnea.

• 25:06Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Right.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Right? But we all know that it can help with getting women to sleep and calming.

• 25:13Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I have a thousand patients who will testify right now.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 25:17Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I'm like, we're not asking the right questions if, if, you know, science isn't recognizing how progesterone is helpful for some patients for sleep.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  And we don't have any studies showing whether or not we add progesterone and estrogen if that helps with sleep apnea. And I get, I get asked that question a lot. Women will ask me over and over again. Hey, if I start on menopause hormone therapy, will this help me with my sleep apnea? And we don't know.

• 25:51Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

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• 27:04Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So let's, let's go back a little broader about sleep and make sure my list, our listeners understand. When we look at the major causes of sleep disruption, or insomnia as an umbrella term, we have patients who struggle to fall asleep. We have patients who struggle to stay asleep. So let's talk about the fall asleep crowd. Why would any patient, especially a woman, struggle to fall asleep? What are the broad categories of, of causes? Because this is, you said there's 70 different

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:33Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Causes of insomnia.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:35Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  70 different sleep disorders.

• 27:37Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Sleep disorders.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Okay. So the big ones are you have a breathing abnormality, you might have a movement abnormality, or

• 27:46Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Such as? What is a movement abnormality?

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Restless leg syndrome. So restless leg syndrome can affect up to 30% of women in the postmenopausal state.

• 27:53Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Is that more than men?

• 27:54Speaker 01

  And that is way more than men. And so

• 27:57Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I did not know this!

• 27:58Speaker 01

  And it is, and it is under diagnosed. I just had somebody the other day, I was at a party, actually, and somebody pulled me aside and said, you know, you were talking about restless leg. That is me. And I didn't realize that that is actually what was causing me to have insomnia.

• 28:17Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So for our listeners, what is restless leg syndrome?

• 28:19Speaker 01

  So it is what I call, so by definition, it is a conscious phenomenon, meaning you have to be awake. Okay. So restless leg syndrome is the, this movement in any limb, really.

• 28:32Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I was like, does it have to be your leg?

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Doesn't have to be your legs. Could be in your torso. It can be in your arms, your legs. And it's basically this uncomfortable feeling that builds, and you have to move, it dissipates, and then it builds right back up, and it is preventing you from getting to sleep. And then when you're asleep, it's a little bit semantics. There is a condition called periodic limb movement disorder, and that is when limb movements are causing constant arousals and preventing you from getting into the right stages of sleep.

• 29:07Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Wow.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  They're two separate things, but they're actually on the same, they share like the same

• 29:12Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Their cousins.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  Low side. Yeah.

• 29:14Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What causes this? Why would someone develop restless leg syndrome?

• 29:18Speaker 01

  So yeah, one common reason is having low iron stores. And well, let's not get me started on that because

• 29:25Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I had a pregnant patient, who was a pathologist. And had horrible RLS and she's the one who taught me about the ferritin.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:32Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And we were getting her iron transfusions in the pregnancy.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 29:35Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So that she wasn't anemic.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:37Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  But her low ferritin and it worked beautifully for her.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  And we, we under utilize iron infusions because sometimes, you know, it takes a long time with iron replacement to feel.

• 29:49Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  You mean oral, yeah. I had low ferritin for a long time.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:52Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And I had GI stuff. So very difficult for me to absorb. And finally I was like, fine, I'll go get the iron transfusion. Life changing.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:02Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Life changing. I recommend them all the time now for patients who are struggling with absorption.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. And, and the, the normal values are not normal if you have restless leg syndrome.

• 30:14Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What ferritin level are you? I just did a whole post on this today. It's so funny. What, at what level are you like, we need to, we need to get this higher?

• 30:21Speaker 01

  So if you have restless leg syndrome.

• 30:24Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Your ferritin should be around a hundred.

• 30:27Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Okay. So ferritin is the iron storage protein.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 30:31Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And it drops way before you become anemic.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 30:35Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Right. And in our clinic, if they have chronic inflammation, so if their set rates high or, you know, we have signs of chronic inflammation.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:44Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  We're not using 60, we're using a hundred because it's an acute phase reactant.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:48Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  The ferritin will rise, you know, abnormally in response to inflammation. So we're, we have to move that goalpost for patients.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  100%. And also it crosses the blood brain barrier. That's why you have restless leg syndrome because it has a role in how dopamine gets released.

• 31:05Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Amazing.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  And so that's how it works in the brain. That's why you will have restless leg syndrome. And, and we've had these levels that are standard that are now changing.

• 31:18Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Right, for normal. But even then, those normals, those normal levels are not normal if you have restless leg syndrome. So now the normal range is like 45.

• 31:27Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  45. It was 15. They tripled it.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Terrible. It was terrible.

• 31:31Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  So you'd have these women coming in who had like a ferritin level of, you know, 10.

• 31:37Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  You're like, oh, you're borderline.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  You're bor- right. It's not really that low. And, and these people probably, these women should have had iron infusions.

• 31:44Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Okay, so we talked about movement disorders. Let's keep going.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  So then you have, you're left with chronic insomnia, and chronic insomnia is when there's not really anything else that could be causing you to not be able to fall asleep. So the other big one is circadian rhythm abnormalities. So let's say you're a night owl, but you really have to get up early because you have to go to work earlier, or you've got to get your kids to school, or you're taking care of somebody, whatever. The point is that you're not in sync with your circadian rhythm, which again, those clock genes are in the brain. You can't really change them. You're, it's kind of like eye color, you're born with them.

• 32:22Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  You can fake them out. So that's called circadian realignment, when we try to adjust somebody's circadian rhythm. And the other one is, you know, there's lots of reasons why people will have chronic insomnia. One can be your change in hormones. One can be trauma. Another one can be mental health.

• 32:44Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Hmm.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  There's all sorts of reasons.

• 32:46Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Anxiety.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Anxiety.

• 32:47Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Resting thoughts, yeah.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  Depression. I mean, all kinds of things.

• 32:49Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  All right. So what about the patients who go to sleep fine?

• 32:52Speaker 01

  Uh-huh.

• 32:52Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  But then 2:00 AM, 3:00 AM. What is happening?

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's learned hypervigilance. Especially in midlife, this is a neuro, neuroendocrine, neurosteroid change, right? And so we have a change in cortisol, and sometimes that cortisol spike starts to happen earlier, which causes early morning awakenings. Then your brain, basically, that, that neuro pathway for sleep, it changes. Your brain just says, okay, we're going to learn a new, a new path. And so you develop this hypervigilance, this, this hyper arousal in your sleep, and that is a behavioral change. This is why it takes

• 33:36Speaker 01

  time to treat insomnia, and it is not typically fixed with any sort of prescription, medication, or supplement.

• 33:45Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  How do we fix it?

• 33:46Speaker 01

  So the, the number one treatment is cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia.

• 33:51Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What is that?

• 33:52Speaker 01

  So it is basically retraining the brain. It's, it's all about behavioral change. It's about addressing and understanding what is causing that hypervigilance, and retraining the brain. Kind of like building muscle. You know, I always tell folks, You don't just go to the gym and pick up 50 pounds.

• 34:11Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  You can't, right? You have to start slow. You have to be consistent. And then you can eventually pick up that 50 pound weight. Uh, also tell people it is not a couch to 5K. It is a couch to marathon. It doesn't happen fast. Uh, you know, if you, if you were really pressed, you could probably run, you know, three miles, but you can't run a marathon really easily in a week or two. Without training. This is about changing somebody's way of thinking and also giving them some ideas on how they can kind of give themselves permission to go back to sleep.

• 34:50Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  How does that look like? What would you, okay, so, so me, all right? I'm waking up at 3:00 AM every night and we've ruled out medical causes. I don't have sleep apnea. My hormones are replaced, you know? We haven't put a finger on it. Um, how, how would you counsel me to do, do, is there an app? Do I go to a counselor?

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's so many different avenues. So there are apps out there. There are sleep psychologists out there. There are online programs. There are books. The key is consistency and you really have to address all of the components that are in cognitive behavioral therapy. So it's kind of what we call a three legged stool. So the first one, most people do a pretty good job at, which is sleep hygiene. But more people than we think, don't always go to bed at the same time or wake up at the same time. Maybe they're doing things in their daily life that is affecting their ability to get to sleep and they don't even realize it. Maybe they're eating a really heavy meal right before bed.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  Maybe they're exercising too late. Maybe they are super stressed all day and don't realize that that is going to affect their ability to kind of shut down and get to sleep. So there's that sleep hygiene component. And also maybe their bed, their bedroom is, is not conducive.

• 36:11Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Too cold.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  Too hot, too cold, too loud.

• 36:13Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Too bright.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  And then the other one is addressing the. The hypervigilance, the stimulus, like what is causing that middle of the night awakening? And I will tell people, you know, let's develop a plan. Let's figure out how to help yourself get back to sleep and not catastrophize when we wake up. So a lot of us, right, wake up in the middle of the night and go, oh, my gosh, I'm not going to get back to sleep. What's going to happen? Instead, have a plan. Okay, I'm awake and I know I'm not falling asleep, falling back to sleep anytime soon. So I'm going to get out of bed and I'm going to go sit somewhere and do the most god awful boring thing I can do,

• 36:54Speaker 01

  like reading a book or doing some sort of meditation, something that will help induce sleep. So we don't want people cooking, cleaning, working, exercising if they cannot fall back to sleep. And we do want them to get out of bed. That is called stimulus control, fancy word for making sure that your brain associates the bed with sleep or intimacy and nothing else. Because if you stay in there for a long time, then your brain starts to think that the bed is like the sofa or the kitchen table. It doesn't associate it with- So you should get up. Sleep. So you gotta get up. It's painful. Pick something like an insomnia chair, whatever you want to call it, and just do something really relaxing

• 37:38Speaker 01

  and boring to help yourself get sleepy enough. And when you're sleepy enough, you go back to bed. The last one is the hardest, but it actually works really well, which is sleep restriction. So if you think you're only getting five and a half hours of sleep, then that's how much time you should give yourself. So instead of trying to get into bed at 10, tossing and turning for two hours, or falling asleep and then waking up at one and tossing and turning for two hours or whatever, and then getting up at six, we tell people, well, if you are only getting five and a half hours of sleep, then let's slowly, we don't just say only get five and a half hours,

• 38:19Speaker 01

  but we start to help people kind of compress their sleep so that they can then expand their sleep. So I call this the accordion effect. So you know how you have to, the only way, if you push an accordion in, the only way for it to go is out. Mm hmm. So that's the same concept, is that you kind of have to compress the sleep in order to expand the sleep. So, you know, what I will say about cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia is that there's a lot of data around it. It is successful, but it is pretty rigid and you do have to follow all of the components or you have a lower success rate. And what I find is that there hasn't been a lot of studies on chronic insomnia only in women, right?

• 39:03Speaker 01

  And so I think it drives a lot of people's anxiety. So you already have some anxiety about getting to sleep and then it revs up this sleep anxiety even more. So I like to combine acceptance and commitment therapy with it, which is a different type of therapy altogether, where you give yourself, you know, love and grace so that you can actually get up the next day and maybe feel like it's not going to be the end of the world. So maybe you can't fall asleep in the middle of the night and instead of saying, oh my gosh, I'm not going to do well tomorrow, I've got a presentation, or I have to do these things for my children, or what have you, that you say, you know what, I'm going to

• 39:48Speaker 01

  be awake for 90 minutes tonight and I'm not going to let it ruin my day. Maybe I'm not going to fire off on all cylinders, but I'm going to make it the best that I can for the next day. And you start to be kind to yourself. So I call CBTI, the grit, and acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT, the grace. So if you can combine those two, I think you have a higher success rate. There are very few published studies on this and there are very few sleep psychologists who practice this and combine therapy, but I am, that's what, how I practice it, that's what I focus on when I help people with insomnia.

• 40:28Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  You've talked a lot about how some of these common sleep conditions like sleep apnea and RLS are missed.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 40:35Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  In women. I learned zero. I heard of RLS more as like this curiosity.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:41Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And sleep apnea was old fat guys, you know? And so, and men who snored. I think it's important for our listeners to understand the female presentation, the atypical sleep apnea, though we're 51% of the population. Like, talk to me about women and how they present with these.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  So.

• 40:59Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And why do we care?

• 41:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, we care because it is a cardiovascular risk factor. So if you have moderate or severe obstructive sleep apnea, we know that you have up to a 25% increase in having a heart attack or a stroke. Or having a neurocognitive issue later on, like memory loss or dementia.

• 41:18Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Hypoxia?

• 41:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:19Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And inflammation?

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's the, it's the chronic low oxygen state that then causes all of this reflex physiology in the body that then puts you at risk. So, women don't typically present with loud snoring, witnessed apneas. There's actually a study out there that, that talks about the fact that if women have a male partner, they're less likely to be identified as having sleep apnea because their, their male partner will not notice anything abnormal happening if they're asleep. But women tend to have insomnia. They tend to have this, they call it tossing and turning.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  And I love it, women never say that they snore, they say that they purr.

• 42:07Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  So I, I love it. Women always say, I don't really snore, I, I kind of purr when I sleep. That can be mild, mild snoring, that's enough. And the, the issue is that you don't have to, you know, be obese to have sleep apnea. And especially in.

• 42:26Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Especially women, right?

• 42:27Speaker 01

  Especially women. You can have a normal body mass index, you don't have to have loud snoring, but if you're menopausal, you're at greater risk and, you know.

• 42:39Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Whoa, menopause increases the risk of sleep apnea?

• 42:42Speaker 01

  It does. Up to 50% of women will have sleep apnea, not know they have it. 90% of those women do not know that they have sleep apnea. So nine out of 10 women. Are not diagnosed. And then there's a delay in diagnosis because all of our screening tools are gender biased. I mean, the STOP-BANG questionnaire, which is this acronym for these questions, the G is gender. So if you're a woman, you don't get a point.

• 43:14Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  You get a lower score.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  You get a lower score.

• 43:15Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Stop it. Because they don't recognize that women have sleep apnea.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:18Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Okay.

• 43:22Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  One of my takeaways from all this is if a woman is snoring and her partner recognizes it, or she's purring, she might be further along the course than her male counterpart.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 43:33Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So if you're snoring at all, you should go get evaluated.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  100%. I have a very low threshold for testing women. Because, again, women come in feeling just generally that, you know, I don't feel well, I don't know what's going on, I have brain fog, I can't seem to feel rested when I wake up, you know, I might have some mild snoring. So snoring does increase in midlife, but again, it's not caught. It's not, you know, if it's not big, bad snoring, or if somebody isn't watching us have trouble breathing, then many times, the connection of a woman might be at risk for sleep apnea, that connection is not made.

• 44:17Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  A lot of women try to self-medicate.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:20Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  If there are sleep problems. And the first thing they usually reach for is melatonin.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:25Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Talk to me about melatonin, what it is, why it's important.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  Melatonin's a hormone.

• 44:30Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Okay.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  It's got a lot of different uses in our body, actually. But the one that we know about the most, or the one that's talked about the most, is how it starts to set the stage for sleep. So there is this whole concept called dim light melatonin onset. That means in the absence of light, that's when the pineal gland starts to release melatonin. So it's really a clock starter. It is not a sleep aid. It is starting the cascade of sleep. But it is also a circadian rhythm regulator. And what I did not get taught in my sleep medicine fellowship is that we actually lose melatonin production as we age.

• 45:13Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Like how much?

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Well, up to 50% by age 50, which I had no idea about. And I did not realize that the pineal gland is the first gland in the body to calcify. And that the whole stereotype of the older person coming in.

• 45:30Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Now, the only thing I was taught about sleep is you sleep less as you get older.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that is.

• 45:35Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And that is norm, that is, that is expected, that is normal.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Maybe it's expected, but should it be normal? I mean, you know, it's part of quote unquote, "normal aging." But do I have to live like that? Do I have to live with a lower quality of life?

• 45:50Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Why do you think women's sleep complaints are so frequently minimized?

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it goes back to, and this is why I do what I do. I am really tired of the normalization of women's suffering in society. That is exactly why I'm doing what I'm doing. Because we get told from a very young age that our baseline for suffering is higher. We should just suffer through those horrendous menstrual periods that we, that we should be anemic. It's okay, you know, sorry, you're losing a lot of blood. When, if you have children, well, you're just not going to get enough sleep. Well, you have to take care of somebody else. There is mental load in the working environment, in your home environment. We are taught that we are supposed to suffer more.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  And then you hit menopause, you hit midlife, and then you become invisible. And then you, you're supposed to suffer. Well, you know, you don't have hormones now. It's just the way it is.

• 46:50Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Sleep is like horrifically disrupted.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 46:53Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Okay, so, um, and we'll get back to melatonin because I have so many more questions.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:58Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  But I chose a field of medicine that, you know, is a lot of shift-ish work, or staying up late at night, or getting up early in the morning for obstetrics to deliver babies. And it was fine when I was 25. You know, it was fine when I was 35, it was fine when I was 40. But man, in my 40s, it was hitting harder and harder. And I was not rebounding like I should. And I would bring everything to work so I could perform. And my family was suffering. So when I was about 48, 49.

• 47:32Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I was having disrupted sleep from hot flashes when I was going through menopause or in the early stages before I, you know, realized HRT wouldn't kill me. I reluctantly went on HRT and I, my sleep went back to normal because I wasn't having hot flashes at 2:00 in the morning. I then transitioned positions to shift work away from the clinic so I could go part-time. And so I became a hospitalist. And then COVID hit and I was working 24-hour shifts, three, three days a week. And I wonder how many years I took off of my life because of this. I was an absolute basket case for like the last year of that.

• 48:13Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And I've read that shift workers are at super high risk for medical conditions. Can you talk a little bit about that?

• 48:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, the good news is that you can repair what you were kind of deconstructing.

• 48:28Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Because my 50th birthday present to myself was no more shift work.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  There is good data out there that shows that, you know, if somebody has untreated sleep apnea or untreated insomnia, that once we begin to treat it, you can get yourself back to baseline. Okay. But there is data out to, out there that does state that if you're a shift worker and let's say you are not a night owl, then yes, you are at higher risk for dementia, for cancer. There, it is, and that's because the way that our circadian rhythms work in our body, they rely on our ability to get to sleep at a particular time. It's all about timing. Right? And so shift workers have this disruption. And like I said, every cell works on a circadian rhythm.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  So then every, it's like chaos inside the body. And so our immune system suffers, our ability to clean all the waste products out of the brain suffer. There's so much oxidative stress on the body. And yes, that then kind of is a total setup.

• 49:35Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Why are so many women complaining about nightmares with melatonin?

• 49:39Speaker 01

  So one, you might be taking too much.

• 49:42Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  How much is too much?

• 49:43Speaker 01

  So I'd say anything over three milligrams. Three milligrams is the max that I would recommend for anyone. You don't really need to take more. More is not better.

• 49:53Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  The one I was taking when I didn't know what to do was 10. I was like, this is what is in the bottle. It's purple. It looks pretty.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 50:02Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I associate purple with sleep.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 50:04Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And I was having horrible nightmares. And sometimes it would help or I'd wake up completely drunk, groggy, you know?

• 50:09Speaker 01

  Like I said, more is not better. And we also don't know what's out there over the counter. There's lots of different brands. There's lots of, you know, some of them are high quality. Some of them varying qualities. And there are, there's a couple of studies that were done that showed that at least 70% of the melatonin that is sold over the counter is not just melatonin.

• 50:36Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Wow.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  There's something else in it.

• 50:38Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Wow.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  And so we just need to be really careful. Now, when you do take melatonin, you could even take a low dose of melatonin and have nightmares or intense dreams. And that's because melatonin is what really intensifies dreaming. Because you're having more sustained sleep. So then you might have more intense dreams. And those, that intensity might translate into, you know, having more abnormal dreaming.

• 51:05Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Mm-hmm. Why do I remember some dreams and usually the scary ones?

• 51:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:09Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Versus the, that had good dreams?

• 51:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, you know, it's all about how the amygdala is reacting when you're dreaming and how you're consolidating and storing the memories. I don't know exactly why somebody is going to remember a nightmare other than the fact that, you know, the way that the brain works when we're dreaming, it almost looks like we're awake. So all of the parts of the brain that are typically asleep and the other stages of sleep actually wait, you know, they, they wake up. The PET scans show that when you're dreaming, a whole, a whole lot of your brain is lighting up. And, you know, that might play a role in how we are consolidating the memory,

• 51:55Speaker 01

  how we're reliving something that might be when something that was really stressful during the day translates into a nightmare. Because it is subconsciously affecting our ability to get to sleep and stay asleep.

• 52:19Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So let's, let's talk about solutions.

• 52:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:21Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And what actually works. Hormone therapy and sleep, estrogen, progesterone.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:26Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And what we know.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  So we had talked about how the lack of estrogen, then, you know, you, you tend to have more fragmentation of sleep. It is your, it really focuses on thermoregulation. And so if you replace estrogen, then you tend to have more of that temperature regulation, which then allows you to stay asleep, which then allows you to get into all the right stages of sleep and increase your REM percentage. So that's the plus with estrogen. With progesterone, when we give progesterone to folks, that is also then calming. It helps to set the stage for sleep better. And it helps, probably helps, we don't have data, with some of that airway protection, but we don't know if it's curative or not.

• 53:12Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Okay.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  So you're kind of like calming the brain and then you're preparing the brain to stay asleep. Right? And then there are some studies that show that testosterone does help with deep sleep. And for some people, testosterone's a missing link. Like, they still have trouble sleeping even after they've started on estrogen and progesterone. And they're like, okay, let's try testosterone. And that was the missing link for them. It's not as well studied, but it is a potential solution. But up to, you know, at least a third of those folks who start on hormone therapy, still have trouble sleeping. Up to half of those folks still will have trouble sleeping. So then we have to start looking at the other organic causes. Right?

• 53:57Speaker 01

  Like, do you have untreated sleep apnea? Do you have untreated restless leg syndrome? Do you have chronic insomnia? Let's fix that. Let's work together and treat that.

• 54:07Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And that's where you come in.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:08Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah. How do you build the perfect sleep environment? Build me a bedroom.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, you want it to be dark, cool and quiet. Those are your big three. So you don't want extra light. Uh, if you need blackout shades, you need an eye mask. I'm a big fan of eye masks. I love a good eye mask.

• 54:27Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Do you have an eye mask on your website?

• 54:28Speaker 01

  I do. I did this collaboration with Kailu Silk and I love it. And I made little eye, little pads, little pillows for, so that if you wear eyelashes, it doesn't affect your eyelashes. But you know, that tiny little bit of pressure around the eye actually induces calming. So for some people, that can really be helpful. For other people, maybe they don't, that's not for them. But you have to figure out what's good for you.

• 54:54Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Catherine sleeps with an eye mask, my daughter.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:57Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah, I don't. And I, I've taken him on a plane, like, you know, especially an overseas flight.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 55:03Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  But I, I, I just worry, you know, I've never slept without, and maybe because I had trauma as a kid and was assaulted, but you know, I sleep with fear that someone's gonna touch me and hurt me, you know?

• 55:16Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. Well, you know, you just brought-

• 55:18Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  And so being blind scares the hell out of me.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  Yep. You brought up trauma and that was discussed actually at the menopause society. And it's something that we don't talk enough about or, or really bring it up in the menopause state, but those hormones are actually a little bit protective. You know, they're actually allowing us to power through the day. And when that scaffolding starts to diminish that, then you don't have the compensatory mechanisms to power through. And so trauma tends to resurface in midlife when women are going through menopause and it greatly affects their sleep.

• 55:58Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Wow.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  That's a big deal that we don't talk enough about.

• 56:01Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Mm hmm.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  I jokingly, or maybe not so jokingly, I carry around a box of tissues with me because every, literally every single woman that I see will just break down in tears.

• 56:13Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Oh, me too.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Once we-

• 56:14Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  In the menopause clinic?

• 56:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:16Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  All day?

• 56:16Speaker 01

  Once we get down to the bottom of everything. Because a lot of women will not be on hormones because again, we still have a lot of work to do, right? So I'll say, let's start with that. And if that isn't going to help with the sleep, then let's start digging deeper.

• 56:31Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Okay. So for women who can't? For a contraindication or choose not to use hormones?

• 56:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:39Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What are the your top strategies for them?

• 56:41Speaker 01

  At the end of the day, there's no medication that's going to cure your inability to to get to sleep as we talked. There's no medication.

• 56:50Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah, we haven't talked at all about the sedatives.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:53Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Oh, that's such a Pandora's box.

• 56:56Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Cause I took Ambien.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:58Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I've taken Ambien when I was doing shift work. My husband, when he went overseas. But I have friends, one of my best friends, who cannot sleep without it. Like will not, like it is, it is non-negotiable in her life and there's an addiction here, you know?

• 57:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:13Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Talk, let's, let's go there.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  Okay, so there's, again, there's no medication that cures your, your sleep. And Ambien and those medications like that, the benzodiazepine-like receptor agonist is what I like to call them. They're sedative hypnotics.

• 57:34Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Antianxiety.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  And they're also amnestics.

• 57:37Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Meaning they cause amnesia.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  Yes, you forget waking up in the middle of the night. I don't know how many people that I've, I've reviewed their sleep study with them and I'll say, oh, look, you were awake here for like forty, forty-five minutes. And I say, no, I wasn't. Yes, you were. Your brainwaves are awake and they don't remember. So their perception is that they're getting good sleep. So these medications taken long term can be pretty detrimental because if you're still not getting into the right stages of sleep, you still have all those risk factors.

• 58:08Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What about trazodone?

• 58:09Speaker 01

  So trazodone, oh, love trazodone. Um, it's, it's one of those.

• 58:14Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Is that like a bless your heart comment? Like, yeah, trazodone, bless your heart.

• 58:18Speaker 01

  It is, it is used, it's overused. It is labeled as an antidepressant that was a terrible antidepressant. And at the doses that it works for depression, you're a complete zombie because you need like three hundred to four hundred milligrams to treat depression. But they realized that everybody was falling asleep all the time. So trazodone is one of those medications that is used widely, but you. You really want to get down to the root cause of your problem. Because what if that medication stops working? Or there's no medication that works forever. Most people need escalating doses. Or they need a Triad or, you know, five things.

• 59:00Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  It used to work and now it's not working. You have to increase the dose. Yeah.

• 59:04Speaker 01

  So really you want to get back down to those drivers, those behavioral drivers. And maybe it's masking another sleep disorder that you didn't even know you had. So up to 60% of folks who have obstructive sleep apnea have insomnia. And that's a condition that's called comisa. So that is a comorbid condition of having sleep apnea and insomnia. And maybe you're just treating your insomnia and don't even know that you have sleep apnea in addition.

• 59:35Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What time should I go to bed?

• 59:37Speaker 01

  It depends on what your circadian rhythm is set at. So people are either early birds, they're night owls, or they kind of fall somewhere in between.

• 59:46Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Is that your chronotype?

• 59:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's your chronotype. Again, those are clock genes. You're born with them. Again, we can kind of help you reset them, if you will, or align them to fit your needs.

• 59:59Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I am a morning person.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  You're a morning person.

• 1:00:01Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Oh, yeah. I am a badass in the morning. I mean, I could like cure cancer in the morning. And then the minute, like by two in the afternoon, I am just really kind of, hmm, just functioning. And I go to bed typically earlier than most people. So because I'm up at five.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:19Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  You know.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  So you go to bed like at nine-ish?

• 1:00:22Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah, sometimes eight thirty.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  Yep, eight thirty. Yep. So that's an early bird. Somebody who wants to go to bed at eight, nine, wake up at four, five. People who are night owls, by definition, they want to go to bed at 12, wake up at eight, go to bed at one, wake up at nine.

• 1:00:37Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What if you marry someone of the different, you know, what if your life partner, your bed partner is in a different chronotype? What do you do?

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  You have to honor your own chronotype. It's better for your health. So, you know, that's interesting you say that because a lot of women will come in and they try to follow their partner's chronotype. Because they are people pleasers and they want to go to bed when their partner goes to bed, they want to wake up when their partner wakes up and they're just dying of chronic sleep deprivation because they, those folks tend to be more of an early bird and they're staying up way too late with their partner. And the other funny thing is that anecdotally, a lot of people marry the opposite chronotype. So.

• 1:01:23Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So let's talk about lifestyle outside of, we're talking exercise, nutrition, all the, all the other pillars of health. How, how, how do these play into how we sleep?

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  So, you know, when we, when we think about exercise, we know that exercising actually does help you get into all the different stages of sleep better. You just have more sound sleep. So we do want to promote people moving that.

• 1:01:49Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What kind of movement?

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  Any kind of movement, you know, as long as you're out there raising your heart rate a little bit, that's all that counts. I mean, if you can go walk fast, you can go swim lanes fast, you can walk lanes in the swimming pool, you can do whatever it takes to help you.

• 1:02:06Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Dr. Matzmaur is a triathlete. I'm like, I don't get in the pool.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  So, you know, whatever it takes to get that, that, that dopamine release, it really helps with sleep. And then there is some data that shows that if you eat too heavy of a meal too close to bedtime, that affects your ability to get into the right stages of sleep.

• 1:02:29Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What about the quality of our nutrition? Does that really play in at all?

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, if you're eating nothing but greasy junk food, it definitely affects the other parts of your body that then affect your ability to get to sleep. So if you're eating stuff that doesn't, that doesn't allow your stomach to feel good, then that's going to affect your sleep. High saturated fatty food is not going to be conducive to helping you get into the right stages of sleep.

• 1:02:57Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Okay. Now, I've seen a lot of, in the wellness world, lots of talk about, you know, and I even have a few of these devices, the red light therapy, morning light, like.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  How important is all that?

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  There's some small studies that say that that might be helpful, but these are all new things that have come out. And what I try to do is let's get down to basics.

• 1:03:18Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  Right? If you try to eat the way that we're supposed to eat with, you know, lots of vegetables, fruits, good protein, some carb, and you try to honor your body with exercise and movement therapy, that's really what you need to focus on. I don't want to complicate it too much. You don't need a wearable to get better sleep. You don't need light therapy to get better sleep. This is not about all of the, all the little accessories that we need, right? Sleep is, it's foundational. It's a core thing. We got to eat. We have to drink water. We have to sleep.

• 1:03:59Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Full disclosure, Dr. Matamora and I, and I talked about it in the intro, have developed a sleep supplement together. So let's talk about supplements with our listeners knowing

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:04:08Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  that, you know, there is a commercial interest here, but let's just talk about it in general. Don't even say what's in our sleep supplement. We talked about melatonin.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:15Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So yes or no, yea or nay? You like it? Don't like it?

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  I like it. And melatonin, I think there's something to it. We don't have enough research out there that we should absolutely 100% replace it. But goodness, if we are losing that much of it.

• 1:04:33Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Can we check melatonin levels?

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  And you can in saliva. So there's, there's, there's some tests that you can do to check, to check melatonin levels.

• 1:04:42Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Do you check them in your patients?

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  No, no, I don't. So I, I think that sleep support, circadian rhythm support, relaxing your body.

• 1:04:52Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Like you've said, it's really important. A sleeping pill. It's not a sedative, right?

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  It's not a sedative. It's not a prescription sleep aid. This is about supporting mechanisms that maintain quality.

• 1:05:07Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So what else? Any other supplements you would consider?

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  I don't really recommend supplements typically because it's usually really

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  Personal, right? Like something that might work, like valerian root might work for somebody, but may not work well for somebody else. Lemon balm might work well for somebody, but might not work well for somebody else. And it's really difficult then to say, well, you should use, you should use this. What I like to focus on are things that are evidence based, that we have a lot of data on. So we have a lot of data on the components that we put into this sleep supplement, and we know exactly what they are doing. What I find is that when people come to see me, they're having trouble sleeping, and they come with an entire shopping bag, full of supplements and medications. And I start

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  to say things like, well, I don't think we need to actually take all of these. And somebody will say, but I can't sleep without these. And I said, no, wait a minute, you're still here. You're here seeing me, because you're still having trouble sleeping. So are they really helping you? Or what's really, what's really going on here? So you're still here, because you are still not getting sleep, and you're taking $150 worth of supplements?

• 1:06:25Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  So I don't think that they're really helping you, or else you wouldn't be here.

• 1:06:30Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So for a woman who's been listening, and who's exhausted, who's been exhausted for years, what's the first hit step that she, you know, because you are talking to, you know, a couple thousand people on the podcast. And there's at least, I promise, 20% of them, at least in my place, in yours, it's 100% of your population, but in mine, it's close to 50, and it's only menopausal women, who are like, okay,

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:54Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I'm not sleeping. We need to fix this, because I don't want to die. What is she gonna do?

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  So the first thing that I do, which is why I carry those tissues, is I validate. And I say, this is not a you problem. This is not an internal problem. This is something that we can work together. It's just not that something's broken in you. We, we can help. These are organic.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  Chronic insomnia, which is talked about a lot, is an organic medical condition.

• 1:07:28Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Would you say that it is a predictable, expected, you know, consequence of menopause and aging?

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  It's pretty darn common, yeah. And we need to do something about it and we need to say to, to women, "Sorry, you don't need to, you know, you don't need to live with this." And again, that validation, that telling women that they're not broken, that this is not something inherently wrong with them, they didn't cause it, is huge. So I start there.

• 1:08:02Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  I see in my patients, and it's happened to me occasionally, when you get that middle of the night wake up, or you're struggling to fall asleep. I had trouble with falling asleep when I was younger and ended up doing CBT before I realized I was doing it, you know? And you get into that negative spiral in your head. Like you, you were describing it of, "Oh, my God, I'm up. Shit, you know, I'm not, it's gonna ruin everything and why is this happening?" It's horrible, you know? You were sitting there spiraling alone in a room, struggling so hard, "I need sleep, I need sleep, I just have to sleep, sleep, sleep," and I can't sleep. And I think it's affecting our mental health way more than we ever expected.

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  It takes a toll on someone's ability to maintain positivity, to feel like there's, like there is hope for them. And that's what I tell women. That's the other thing I tell women is there is always something we can do to help you get better sleep. All is not lost.

• 1:08:57Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What is one myth about sleep and menopause, or just sleep in women and aging in general, that you want to debunk?

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  Well, one of them is that, that you don't have to live with it, we don't have to suffer through it, that we can work together, that every 15 minutes counts. That's the other thing. A lot of people get, get stuck. A lot of women come in and say, "Well, I'm only getting six hours of sleep," or "I can only get five." And I'll say, "Well, let's work on achieving an extra 15 minutes." Because if you add that extra 15 minutes, times seven, times, you know, 12 months, a whole year, that's a whole lot more sleep. So let's focus on the little wins and not have to think that we have to be perfect.

• 1:09:43Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  You've described sleep as a vital sign. What do you mean by that?

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  So, you know, why do we check vital signs? Because we know that-

• 1:09:51Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  They're screening tools.

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  They're screening tools. We know that there's something that we can do about them. We know that also treating somebody's high blood pressure, treating somebody who has an abnormal respiratory rate, that actually is going to help them with reduction of other medical conditions, right? And so that's why I think that sleep should be a vital sign because, again, it is the foundation. It's the core. We could be chasing our tail with high blood pressure if somebody is not getting enough sleep.

• 1:10:22Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  We could be chasing our tail if somebody has untreated sleep apnea and we didn't realize that they were spending eight hours in bed, but they were only getting five hours of sleep.

• 1:10:34Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What gives you hope right now in the field of women's sleep medicine?

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  This increased awareness and me just kind of ringing that bell over and over again and people like yourself and all of us out there who are taking notice and giving women agency and knowledge to have these types of conversations with their provider.

• 1:10:59Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  How can someone find a sleep medicine specialist?

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  So you can look online. On the American Academy of Sleep Medicine has a list of providers. There are sleep providers in just about every city. And I, you know, I think that that's a good place to start.

• 1:11:17Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So you developed something called the Dream Sleep Method?

• 1:11:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:11:22Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Did I say that correctly?

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:11:23Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  What is it?

• 1:11:24Speaker 01

  So it is an acronym to cover all of the different bases that could be affecting your sleep. What I, what I hear a lot from women is that they got told that they didn't have sleep apnea because they had a home sleep study and that there was nothing else that could be done. So, you know, got to figure something else out. So they come to my office in appointments feeling pretty hopeless. So what I realized is that there's all of these other factors that could be affecting people's sleep that are- Not really getting addressed. So the dream sleep method is basically an acronym for all of those bases to cover. So D is your daytime activities. So what are you doing during the day that could be affecting your ability to get to sleep? Are you running around?

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  Are you are you feeding yourself correctly? Are you giving yourself enough water? Are you stressed out all day long and then bringing that into the bedroom? So that's daily activities. That's the D. R is the resting environment. Is your bedroom too cold, too hot? Is the mattress uncomfortable? Do you have a TV that you have to have on all night? Is is that there too much light coming into your bedroom? So you want to make sure that the bedroom is dark, cool and quiet, and that you're optimizing that resting environment for sleep. And then E are the emotions. So, you know, are you struggling with depression? Are you struggling with anxiety?

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  Are you struggling with trauma that is affecting your ability to get to sleep and stay asleep? And then A is archetype or your chronotype. So are you an early bird, but you work a night shift? Are you a night owl or what I call an Aphrodite? So I call Artemis is your early bird. Aphrodite is your night owl. But you have to wake up really early to get to work, or you've got to take kids to school, or you've got some other commitment and you are you can't follow your true circadian rhythm. Or are you an Athena, which is basically somewhere in between? And and you're able to kind of fit into the the societal norm,

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  which we have here in the United States, which is like 10:00 PM to 6:00 PM. But knowing which your circadian rhythm is is really important to understand.

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  How you get into the right stages of sleep? And then the last one are medical conditions. Do you have untreated sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, a neuromedical condition, a cardiovascular condition, menopause? All of these things.

• 1:13:59Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Having to get up to pee.

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:00Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Yeah, multiple times at night.

• 1:14:02Speaker 01

  That's right. That's actually a risk factor. I have so many urologists refer patients to me because getting up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night can be a risk factor.

• 1:14:13Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Amazing. Is there anything else you want to tell our audience?

• 1:14:17Speaker 01

  Well, I'll just kind of leave again with, there is always something you can do to help yourself get better sleep. All is not lost. And that nothing is, nothing is wrong with you. There is something that we can do to help you feel better about your sleep, feel confident again about your sleep.

• 1:14:40Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us on UnPaused. You're menopausal now?

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  I'm post, yeah.

• 1:14:46Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Post-menopausal, you're done?

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  I am done.

• 1:14:48Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  So menopause for a lot of our listeners, not me anymore. I feel like I am my absolute most badass self now.

• 1:14:57Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Feels like the world wants us to hit pause. The world wants us, you know, we tend to be invisible. Women really, really feel invisible. But what are you doing to unpause for yourself?

• 1:15:07Speaker 01

  I reinvented myself. This was my reset. And that's, that is the one thing I want to leave people with is that even if you've had years of bad sleep, you can still reset and enjoy the rest of the decades that you have left to live. And with menopause, my F jar got empty and I said, I am over this. I am not going to be invisible. I'm going to be heard and I'm going to raise awareness and I'm going to help other people know that they have power in themselves, that there's a group of, of other people that want to promote health

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  and that we have a whole nother second half of our life to live even bigger and better.

• 1:15:57Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us on UnPaused.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:16:04Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  You can find Andrea on Instagram at DrAndreaMatsumura and through her website, sleepgoddessmd.com. You can find full episodes of UnPaused on YouTube at Dr. Mary Claire. I'd love to hear from you about this topic and anything else that's on your mind. You can find me on Instagram at Dr. Mary Claire and get honest, accurate information on health, fitness, and navigating midlife at thepauselife.com. My upcoming book, The New Perimenopause, is available for preorder on Amazon. If you're loving this podcast, I have an important request. Please take a moment to follow UnPaused on your favorite podcast app. Following and listening is what pushes this information

• 1:16:46Dr. Mary Claire Haver?

  to more women who need it. So if this podcast has helped you feel seen, understood, or supported, hit follow right now so you never miss an episode. Thank you for being here with me. Let's keep going. UnPaused. UnPaused is presented by Odyssey in conjunction with Pod People. I'm your host, Dr. Mary Claire Haver. The views and opinions expressed on UnPaused are those of the talent and guests alone and are provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. No part of this podcast or any related materials are intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.