If you look up the symptoms of perimenopause, you will see that sleep disturbance is one of them. Sleep disturbance is too a nice a phrase for what’s going on with me. It’s more like sleep twister. Or maybe sleep turbulence. If I am lucky enough to get to sleep, I wake up in the middle of the night then toss and turn until the clock goes off.
Last night (I woke up at 3:02 am) was better than the night before (I woke up at 1:14 am). For the first time in my life, I am having trouble getting to and staying asleep, so I decided to search for some remedies online.
One study showed that people that listen to soothing music showed a 35 percent improvement in sleep. It was suggested you listen to something with 60 to 80 beats per minute to help slow your heart rate and breathing, which promotes sleep.
Speaking of breathing, I also read that breathing exercises can help. Maybe doing these while meditating will help calm down my racing mind. While doing the exercises, you can think about a calming place like a beach or walk in the woods. Some people who did this reported falling asleep as much as 20 minute sooner.
One suggestion I was surprised to read was to get out of bed. For some reason, this seems to be something I cannot do, but what I read if you stay in bed and realize you can’t sleep, it just raises your anxiety level, which makes sleep even more impossible.
I also read that one long touted sleep remedies may actually work – counting sheep. Again, maybe it is just calming a racing mind, but one study showed that many people admitted that doing something as boring as counting sheep actually helped. Researchers attributed it to focusing on something mindless like counting rather than every day stresses.