Which hormone causes insomnia

Sound sleep grants a reduced risk of high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, and depression. A lack of sleep causes lower productivity and a greater risk of injury in everyday tasks, like driving. When testosterone is balanced, slow wave or deep sleep is easier to achieve. If you sleep enough each night, you can lose weight as a result of a decrease in your cortisol level.

Furthermore, greater sleep length is associated with a reduced incidence of breast cancer and people who nap for 30 minutes at least three times a week had a 37 percent lower chance of heart attack. Besides these benefits, bioidentical hormone therapy provides immediate relief from all the other menopause symptoms.

Contact the BodyLogicMD bioidentical hormone doctor nearest you to schedule an appointment and learn more about how hormone therapy can provide relief from insomnia and sleeplessness in women.

Share Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email. Although these are two of the biggest indicators, others do exist. Over time, this loss of sleep can take a toll on your health and well-being. In addition to being tired, insomnia can affect your health in several ways.

Women transitioning into menopause may experience sleep issues. In fact, up to 60 percent of women who are postmenopausal experience frequent bouts of insomnia. Your estrogen and progesterone levels decrease during menopause. This can trigger a number of changes in your lifestyle, particularly in your sleeping habits. This is partly because progesterone is a sleep-producing hormone.

While your body copes with these dwindling hormone levels, you may find it harder to fall asleep and stay asleep.

Hot flashes and night sweats are two of the most common side effects of menopause. This is the same chemical responsible for your reaction to stress or a fight-or-flight scenario. Your body may have a hard time recovering from this sudden burst of energy, making it difficult for you to fall back asleep.

In fact, most people will face a night or two of restless sleep quite frequently. Common causes include:. Learn more: Mental health, depression, and menopause. Your doctor will first ask you about your sleeping habits. This includes when you usually wake up, when you usually go to sleep, and how tired you are during the day. They may ask you to keep a sleep diary to track these behaviors over a period of time.

Your doctor will also perform a physical exam to check for any underlying conditions that may cause insomnia. Therefore, when estrogen levels decline such as in perimenopause the years preceding menopause, when hormone levels are declining and menopause, it is both harder to fall asleep and stay asleep throughout the night. Menopause is notorious for causing insomnia, and hot flashes often play a minor role, but insomnia may still plague women for many years even without hot flashes.

Researchers have found that women who have hot flashes during perimenopause are also more likely to have sleep disturbances.

Sleep disturbances are common during the perimenopause, menopause and postmenopause. Differences in the ways that studies have measured sleep disturbance may account for the wide range; self-reporting tends to show underestimation of total sleep time and number of arousals, with overestimation of time taken to get to sleep, compared to laboratory sleep studies. Overall, studies consistently show increased likelihood of sleep problems during the menopausal transition, with close association with the presence of flushes and sweats.

The menopausal decline of estrogen contributes to disrupted sleep by causing menopausal symptoms from hot flushes and sweats vasomotor symptoms to anxiety and depressed mood; anxiety leading to difficulty getting to sleep, and depression leading to non-restorative sleep and early morning wakening.

However, it has been proposed that menopausal sleep disturbance may be the underlying cause of anxiety and depression. Joint aches and pains, and bladder problems such as passing urine at night, are also common consequences of estrogen decline and can cause sleep disruption. Menopausal progesterone decline may also be involved in sleep disturbance since progesterone has a sleep inducing effect by acting on brain pathways.

Melatonin, another vital hormone for sleep, decreases with age. Secretion of melatonin is partly influenced by estrogen and progesterone and levels decrease during the perimenopause, often compounding the problem. Sleep apnoea has been considered, in the past, as a sleeping disorder of men but that view is changing. Studies have shown that night sweats and hot flushes may be linked to increased risk of sleep apnoea, and it appears to be more common in women who have had a surgical menopause compared to natural menopause.

It may also be associated with weight gain and there is a possible role of progesterone. Progesterone has an effect on muscle activity at the back of the throat as well as stimulus for breathing, such that decline in progesterone may contribute to partial upper airway obstruction and reduced breathing drive.

Sleep apnoea is not just about loud snoring and gasping. Sleep apnoea in women can also manifest itself in other ways including headaches, insomnia, depression or anxiety and daytime fatigue.

Not every woman will snore or snort loudly whilst asleep.