#128: Simple Tips to Sleep Better - to Boost Recovery, Energy & Strength

Struggling with poor sleep? You’re not alone — and it might be affecting more than you think.

When your sleep is off, everything is harder — from your mood and energy to your cravings, focus, and ability to recover from strength training. It doesn’t matter how dialed in your program is… if your recovery is poor, your results will be too.

In this episode, I’m walking you through:

• Why sleep matters so much for your strength training progress
• The biggest reasons midlife women struggle with sleep
• How to build a better nighttime routine — without overhauling your life
• Two simple sleep tricks to try tonight

If your sleep is a mess right now, this episode will give you both hope and practical tips you can use right away.

Transcript

#128: Simple Tips to Sleep Better - to Boost Recovery, Energy & Strength

[00:00:00] Welcome to 40+ Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach. And today we are talking about something that is not strength training for a change, but is very much related. To how well your results will go. We are discussing sleep, 

so this is part of a three part series where we're looking at reasons why you may not be seeing results from the strength training that you're doing. And today it's really about sleep, which is one of the cornerstones, one of the pillars to wellbeing in midlife. And it's also something that women struggle with so, so much.

And I know I did. And I still do. I am super picky about my sleep. I have to manage it. I have to do things to make sure that my [00:01:00] sleep is good. And the thing is though, that when my sleep works, I am a. Different person than the person I am when my sleep is off and I gotta live on caffeine and I'm eating sugar all day and dragging around.

So I wanna share some tips because I know this is such, such such a common issue I think so many women start to prioritize sleep enormously. I was just talking to my manicurist. I get my gel nails done every month and, about this topic, and she said, yeah, she's been sleeping in separate bedrooms from her husband for years, and the reason is that she needs her sleep and he snores.

And they go to bed at different times and she says, this is the only way that she is going to be human, you know, during the day. And, and I think I. That should be talked about a [00:02:00] lot, lot more that that is a thing, that women need their sleep and that it is okay to sometimes sleep in separate beds. And maybe that is a controversial topic on its own, but I know for myself when I am.

You know, single and looking for a partner. One of the very, very most important criteria right off the bat, along with things like sexual compatibility is sleep compatibility. If I can't sleep with that guy, like he tosses and turns snores or whatever, if I can't sleep, then that is a deal breaker for me because I don't wanna spend the rest of my life struggling even more with sleep.

 So let's do a quick dive into the three phases of sleep. There is deep light and REM sleep, and they each serve a different purpose in helping your body to recover.

[00:03:00] So deep sleep is the slow wave sleep, which helps you restore your body physically. So that's when tissues get fixed, your muscles grow, and your immune system gets beefed up. It's also about consolidating your memories, so locking the facts and figures from your day and turning short term memories into. Your long term memory. And then the other thing, which is really, really fascinating is that deep sleep is when your brain cleanses itself. 

So the cells in the rest of your body kind of have a different system to get rid of byproducts, waste products and it happens all the time like that flushing and getting rid of trash. You know, cellular trash is happening all the time. But your brain is different. So your brain cells, what they end up doing is they [00:04:00] throw the trash just into the space around the cells. And what happens in deep sleep is they've actually gotten footage. They're able to show this. It's like your brain takes a shower, so there is this shower looking thing that happens where your brain kind of cleans out all that trash that. It's been throwing out there. So what that means basically is that if you are not getting deep sleep, then your brain is not able to cleanse itself, and that's why you may. Feel like you're kind of fuzzy headed and all that kind of thing if you're not getting deep sleep. 

Deep sleep is one of those things that I pay a lot of attention to, that I'm getting enough deep sleep and it is something that is affected. I've noticed this because I actually, have an aura ring and I've had it for, oh my God, I wanna say [00:05:00] six years or something like that.

As long as I've been divorced pretty much seven years, almost eight years, and I, I mean, I don't look at it every day, so I'm not like obsessive about it. There can be a week that I don't even. Check it at all. But then if I notice that I'm feeling like I'm dragging or whatever, or I'm curious about, Hey, I'm feeling a little groggy this morning.

How is my sleep last night? I look at how much deep sleep I got and I've noticed there is a correlation with how kind of clearheaded do you feel, and how much deep sleep and alcohol is something that if you have that glass of wine in the evening, it will interfere with that deep sleep. So that's the recovery, the muscle building type of sleep.

Okay. Then there's the rapid eye movement sleep, which is REM for short, and this is when you do your emotional processing. That's when you also dream in your REM sleep. [00:06:00] And then also your memories get integrated, your brain develops and you dream. So your dreams actually help you to solve problems and process emotions so that's happening in REM sleep. 

And then there's light sleep, which is your brain's tuneup time. To keep everything running smoothly for better memory and learning. But normally people look very much at the deep sleep and the REM sleep when they're looking at sleep quality. 

And then there are other measurements that you'll notice as far as how, how restorative your sleep is. And that's measured from your heart rate, like what is your resting heart rate, so the lowest heart rate that you hit during the course of the night, how quickly you get to that lowest heart rate and what your heart rate variability is.

So that is about how your heart [00:07:00] rate, responds to the needs of your body. And so if it's very sensitive, that's a good sign. If it's not so sensitive, that means you're less restored. During the night, your heart rate should go down as you rest and recover, and your heart rate variability should actually go up as your heart, your body recovers, and then your heart can be more sensitive in how it adjusts, its beating. So those are some other kind of interesting things.

So if anybody is. Uses an aura or some kind of monitor, sleep monitor, then those are things that they will show you.

But in summary, kind of, I guess the key takeaways about like the sleep is that deep sleep is important for muscle recovery and repair, and that when you have poor sleep, basically you have higher cortisol, so your stress levels are higher.

You have [00:08:00] poor energy. You'll have potentially worse training sessions, though I think that kind of varies. I've gone into the gym when I've been really tired and actually really rocked my training sessions, so, so that's a little bit variable. But one thing it does affect is you know how much energy you have to do stuff, right?

Your motivation, it also affects your cravings. So if you think about weight loss or weight management, when you are tired, your hunger and satiety hormones. Are a bit out of whack so you will feel hungrier than you actually are and you won't feel full even if you are full.

And it also affects that muscle protein synthesis so how much muscle you get. So really like for so many reasons, sleep is really key and I think it is. Really too bad that, there is this tough, go-getter mentality [00:09:00] that, oh, , you should be able to survive on four hours of sleep and get up early in the morning and all that. And okay, yes, I know there are people who, who love to get up early in the morning, but then they also probably love to go to bed at like eight o'clock at night, right?

So they're getting sufficient sleep and that's fine. Trying, like feeling like you're a hero because you're on, you're sub subsisting on four or five hours of sleep is I think not the way to go in midlife. That probably is not gonna work for very many people. And when you hit perimenopause and your hormones start to go haywire, you may notice that sleep is really, really challenging, you have a harder time falling asleep. You're waking up in the middle of the night and you can't fall back asleep. 

And that has to do with. Hormonal shifts that are going on and this is something where I would discuss it with a healthcare provider because for me, at least, like hormone replacement therapy has helped a [00:10:00] ton.

And it's specifically the progesterone, which kind of relaxes you. And, and our stress levels are higher, in general because of the loss of estrogen, which has been keeping our stress levels a little bit more under control. Plus we have out outside stressors that are coming in, you know, like empty nesting.

I mean, I have my daughter who is starting university in a little over a month. And we need to find her an apartment and move her. And she's going to a city I've never been to and it's like all kinds of stress around that. And then my parents are aging and all, all these kinds of things. And I'm sure these are familiar to a lot of you too.

So sleep can be really, really challenging.

 But I really encourage you to focus on getting this sorted and that everything else will fall into place a lot more easily after that.

So now if we go to what you can concretely do or [00:11:00] things you could look at if you're having trouble sleeping and see if these help you.

And these are things that I, you know, are, are researched. I mean, there's a lot of study on sleep, so you've probably heard some of these, but maybe there's some new ones in there. And then also that I have tried and tested and found to be very effective. 

So. The first thing I'll say to you is, how about looking at what time you're doing your workouts?

So I know there are a lot of women who like to work out in the morning, but then what about those of you who like to work out in the evening? So I found significant difference when I start making my workouts happen earlier, getting, you know, to the gym earlier. Maybe I continue to work than after my workout.

But, especially if you're trying to do like a HIIT workout or a cardio workout, something that's really hard, then I would recommend that you don't do it after 6:00 PM [00:12:00] if you're going to bed around 10, 11 because you do raise your cortisol levels. Then it takes a while for your body to get back into the rest and recover mode, and it can affect your sleep.

So try that. Try, try. Just doing your workouts earlier and then also after your workouts, regardless of what time they are to bring yourself back into the rest, rest, and recovery mode. Try doing some box breathing or some breathing exercises. So box breathing is easy in the sense that, you know, you breathe in for a count of two, you hold your breath for a count of two, you breathe out for a count of two.

You hold breath, hold your breath for a count of two. So it's like a box, 

another thing is that I've noticed. It has a big effect also on the quality of sleep is if you've had a late meal. And I have to say I'm super guilty of this because I will eat dinner after I come for my strength training session, and then it might be pretty late.

And sometimes I haven't really prepared or have something here [00:13:00] to eat right away. But it does really affect your sleep. So if you can eat a little bit earlier, that would be great. And in fact, if we think about overall, you know, trying to control, that you don't do snacking and stuff at night. even putting like a limit on how late in the evening you can eat you that you allow yourself to consume food is not a bad idea.

Like if I'm going to bed at 10 30, if I decided that I'm not eating anything after eight, then that eliminates all that. Late night snacking, which I have to say I'm super guilty of that too. And especially because I don't wanna go to bed at 10 30. I still wanna have a little bit of relaxed time and I'm like, oh, I'll just eat something. Not the best habit to have. 

Okay. And then caffeine. Yep. And if you're asleep, and I mean, this is like a vicious cycle because if your sleep is bad, then you wanna have the caffeine. And you need the caffeine [00:14:00] and. Really then the caffeine interferes with your sleep and then it just keeps going around and around and around.

So try not to have caffeine later in the day at 3:00 PM 'cause your body takes a while to process the caffeine. I think that, I mean, of course there are individual differences, but honestly, just test it. Test it for a week and see if it makes any kind of a difference for you. So that's something that you can try.

The next one is alcohol. So like said that alcohol affects deep sleep and it it interferes with the amount of deep sleep you get. So you're going to be a little less clearheaded the next day. When I got my aura ring and I was following my, I was then of course all excited about this and I'm following everything.

I noticed this very, very distinctly that if I had that glass of wine before bed, my deep sleep was affected, and it led to a change for me that I either [00:15:00] drink or I don't drink. So I don't drink most days. And then if I go out and party, then I drink, then I'm like, okay, I'm, I'm sacrificing the next night's sleep.

And I'm just gonna drink. But of course I also do try to do this thing that, and also for calorie, reasons is that I stop drinking about an hour to two hours before I'm going to bed. It takes me about 45 minutes to take public transportation home. And then I usually have a tiny snack before going to bed at two o'clock in the morning or three o'clock in the morning.

But in any case, I will stop drinking. An hour or so before, you know, I know I'm gonna head home. And I noticed that a lot of my friends, and this seems to be very cultural here also because it also happened when I was doing work, evenings out, people will be like, oh, I ordered my taxi. I have time for one more.

And I'm just thinking to myself. Why are you having the one more, you know, it's like [00:16:00] it's gonna hate you when you're trying to go to sleep. It's just extra calories that you're not gonna get any like use out of in the end because you're actually trying to go to sleep at that point. So anyway, my thoughts on that.

 And then there are things like, don't work or check your email right before going to sleep because then you're kind of in this heightened state right of, of alertness if you're working right up until bedtime. So try to do something that winds you down.

And then the last thing that I would try is if you are somebody who needs to pee at night, so you get up to go to the bathroom, then. In addition to not eating late at night, don't drink water late at night, okay? I mean, don't have a half a gallon or a glass of water right before you go to sleep, because that's just gonna set you up for having to get up in the middle of the night.

Okay? Then if we talk about like sleep routines, and these are, I mean, [00:17:00] routines are really good. If you think about like when you've been raising children, right? You're taught that if you want your kids to fall asleep nicely, you have a bedtime routine for them, right? So they know we're gonna have a bath, then we're gonna brush our teeth, then we're gonna have a bedtime story, and then it's lights out, and that helps them and their bodies and everything to prepare.

For going to sleep. So kind of do the same thing for yourself. So some things here are like no screens for an hour before bedtime. And I feel like that's a tough one in the sense that. I personally like to watch a little bit of just mindless tv. Nothing exciting, but maybe some, something funny or light comedy or something like that.

A romance before bed to kind of get my brain off of work. But anyway, and then you can use blue light blocking glasses, dim the lights, or use red lights before bed. I mean, I go into my [00:18:00] 17-year-old son's room at when I am going to bed and he's got like every single light on and I'm thinking, this is not helping you.

This is kind of triggering your brain to think that it is daytime. Okay. And then the other thing is really aim to get seven to eight hours of actual sleep. Now I have the luxury of being flexible and what times I work. I don't have to show up at an office at a particular time. Or whatever. So what I do is I just set my alarm when I have crawled into bed, when I'm about to turn off the lights, I set my alarm for eight hours later than that, and that way I generally get seven-ish, seven plus hours of sleep.

I don't get eight because it does take you a little while to fall asleep and you're probably awake for a little bit of the time during the night. So just be aware of that as well.

And this is one that is kind of annoying, but try to keep on a regular sleep cycle, [00:19:00] even on the weekends. And this is advice that I got already, oh my gosh.

This is embarrassing. Probably 30 years ago from, from a sleep specialist back when I worked at Nokia and was doing traveling and you know, working long days and whatever. They said, really like get your rhythm down so that your body knows that it needs to sleep like that. Of course, this is something I have decided to completely ignore.

On the weekends when my friends go out and we go partying. So obviously like, you know, you can know that this is the way you should do it, and then you decide that, hey, seeing my friends going to this party or whatever is more important, but maybe don't stay up just to watch a movie to the end, I mean, that's something you could do the next day instead.

And when you are really tired, napping is great, but. Don't do it too late in the day. Napping is [00:20:00] something that I've started to do, not. Every day. But I'd say I take at least one nap a week, and it's usually on the days when I'm dragging like a maniac. And I have found this to be amazingly effective, so I just go lie down in my bed.

I set my alarm for like 20 minutes in the future and I just lie there and I close my eyes and sometimes I'll fall asleep a little bit and sometimes it's just. Kind of de-stressing yourself. And then after 20 minutes, I feel like a new person. So try that out. Especially if you've had a bad night's sleep, you haven't been able to get back to sleep.

If you can take the 15, 20 minutes in the middle of the day, then test that out. It's worked really nicely.

And then if we think about like things you can do , right before bed to kind of calm your nervous system, cuddling is really great. So if you have. A loved one, and this is great for your relationship [00:21:00] too, is just to get close to, to have that body contact, skin on skin contact, 

and maybe, maybe it's not with your honey. Maybe you cuddly your child and then maybe there are some clothes there, obviously, but, but you know, like if you have a small child or a grandchild, you have a cat or a dog, you can pet them. Something to lower your stress levels. Before bed is really useful.

So for me, I mean this is a habit that we've gotten into with my boyfriend is that we, we spend like five, 10 minutes just, I'm curled up to him before we go to sleep and it's like I get to the point where I'm just about to fall asleep and then we turn out the lights and, and then, yeah. So that has worked really, really nicely for me. Just totally calms me down.

And then let's talk a little bit about the sleep environment, because I think that makes a huge, huge difference, at least for some people. [00:22:00] For example, well, there are three main things you can look at here. One is that it's dark. A second is that it's cool, and a third is that it's quiet.

Those are pretty. Clear things, so dark. Get blackout curtains if light bothers you. I have two sets of blackout curtains in my bedroom. Because I need the dark. Some people don't. My mom can sleep in the bright, sunny day, and I guess I can too. If I'm not stressed out, but if I'm stressed out, I really need the darkness.

I need every tool available at my disposal to help me sleep. And then cool. So if you have air conditioning or you can somehow cool down the room, I like to open the window for about half an hour before I go to bed. my bedroom happens to be in the basement. I have. A three story house and the kids are on the top floor and I'm on the bottom floor and in the middle is the kitchen and the living room.

, and I [00:23:00] just love that it's cooler down there, of course, in the basement. And then I don't actually keep the heat on very warm there. And, and I sleep so much better that way.

 And then quiet. So sometimes that could mean like getting a white noise machine if you're in a place where you get random sounds coming in.

Or earplugs though I've been sleeping with earplugs for a really, really long time. So something. Like my fan in the summer. I love it. 'cause it does, it has this constant hum right? So it kind of blocks out any noise from my teenagers leaving the house, coming and going. 'cause the, the front door is fairly close to my bedroom and that kind of thing.

And then what about supplements that can help you fall asleep and sleep better? So as I mentioned earlier, hormone replacement therapy, that is something that helps so, so, so many women, [00:24:00] I think it is. If you were having problems sleeping, that is definitely. A symptom of perimenopause and menopause, and by all means, go talk to your doctor about testing out hormone replacement therapy to help you with that.

I think that's one of the primary reasons that women that I know have gone on the hormone replacement therapy is that their sleep has just suffered so much and then they're just dragging all day. They have no energy, so, so that has helped them a lot. Another thing I've noticed is I take magnesium in the evening, just cheap magnesium pills, nothing fancy.

I take them, take one, whatever the, you know, one is the dose. I take that right before bed and it really helps to. Help me like unwind. I don't know. It probably coincides with all the other things that I'm doing. You know, my, my bedroom is only for sleep. I don't have an office down there. I don't watch TV down there or anything.

, so my [00:25:00] body already knows that, oh, she's going downstairs, she's going to sleep. But I do feel like the magnesium does calm me down somehow. And then for a really long time, I used melatonin to help me fall asleep because I was having this problem. Just with the final, like just switching off. But lately I've been falling asleep.

Okay. Without the melatonin. So I don't use it anymore every night and I'm kind of trying to wean myself off of it or use a very low dose, but that's something that worked for me for a really long time.

Okay. And now let's talk a little bit about some ways. Can help you actually fall asleep and then stay asleep, or let's say fall back asleep when you've woken up in the middle of the night. So one of the key ones, and you've probably heard this, is that your bed should be for two purposes only, for sleeping and for [00:26:00] sex, and otherwise, get the heck outta there.

Don't doom scroll there. Don't watch TV there. Don't use it as the place where you read the newspaper in your book if you have sleep issues, not everybody has sleep issues. Some people can read and do other things in the bed, but if you have sleep issues, start making that bed like only for sleep and sex that's it.

Some things that can help because a lot of times the sleep issues might be also just you being able to relax, kind of let go of the day is trying some breathing or meditation things. So nowadays online there are all kinds of sleep meditations. There are apps for sleep meditations, and that is something that I also use.

So I use so many things. So we've got, like, I've got. All the environmental things. I've got the cuddling with my boyfriend I had. Then once we finished cuddling, I turn on the sleep meditation, we turn off the [00:27:00] lights, and then I listen to this guy's voice with a little no, you know, music in the background.

And by the time he's finished his eight minute spiel, I am asleep. So, and I don't even listen to his words anymore. It's just. The familiarity that's become part of the ritual is, is hearing his voice and then a lot of people get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. Now, it would be nice if you didn't have to do that.

So if there are things that you can do to avoid that, like for example, not drinking water late at night, if you notice that, that affects you. And then the other thing I would say is that I did this episode on pelvic floor health. So if you have urinary like pee leakage or pressure down there or constant UTIs, then please listen to that episode.

'cause you can find really good tips and [00:28:00] information on that. , but if you do need to go to the bathroom anyway, then try to have the lighting set up in your home so you don't have to be flipping on some bright lights and really wake yourself up. So nightlight, you know, some of these little lamps or like spotlights or whatever along the, hallway to get to the bathroom.

We have one that is battery operated and., It's mo it has a motion detector, so it's on for that time that you're in the bathroom and then it turns itself off and it's very easy. And then another small tip is that. If you're somebody who wakes up because you've been processing something and then you're like, oh my God, I gotta remember this thing tomorrow morning.

Just keep a pad of paper and a pen next to your bed. And I wouldn't even turn on the light to write. I would just scribble it there as well as you can in the dark. You know, I have a big enough pad of [00:29:00] paper so that you can scribble in the dark and get your like reminder thing there.

 And then now to the grand finale, which is these two tricks that are great for falling asleep or for falling asleep again once you wake up in the middle of the night.

So the first one. And both of these, I recommend that you try the first time when you're in bed and your intention is actually to fall asleep. 'cause these can be very powerful. So the first one, I call it the eye rolling sleep trick, and I heard about this from a friend of mine. Actually just yesterday, and she says it is amazing, like she does four rounds of this and she's already knocked out.

So you lie in bed and you close your eyes and then what you do is you look up and down, left and [00:30:00] right. Up, down, left, right, and you know, you're just focusing on like really concentrating on that moving of your eyeballs up, down, left, right? Of course, your eyes are closed right up, down, left, right, or you can do it as making a circle with your eyeballs.

And what that does is it suppresses. The amygdala, so your brain's fear anxiety center, and so it relaxes you and helps you get back to sleep. So give that a go.

And the second little technique is called the 4 7 8. Breathing technique. And this one is apparently so powerful that you should definitely not do this. Like when you're driving or in a normal situation where you just wanna calm yourself down. So if you are like just wanting to a little bit [00:31:00] alleviate stress, do the box breathing that I talked about earlier.

So the 4 7 8 breathing technique. It's very simple and it's a great way to really relax yourself and fall back asleep or fall asleep. So what you do is you inhale for through your nose for four seconds, then you hold your breath for seven seconds and you exhale through your mouth for eight seconds and you repeat this three or four times.

And the reason this works is it calms your sympathetic nervous system and activates your parasympathetic nervous system, so gets you into the rest and recover state plus the the rhythm. And having to focus on the counting, the holding and whatever, it gets your mind off of whatever [00:32:00] is stressing you out.

And studies have shown that it lowers your heart rate, your blood pressure, and even increases your heart rate variability. So it really supports rest and recovery. So try that one out and let me know how that goes.

Okay, so you covered a lot today. So if you are having trouble with sleeping, then evaluate a little bit if there might be some tips there that you can test out to help you to sleep better, fall asleep more easily, get back to sleep more easily. And if you have some additional tips, things that have worked for you, let me know.

I would love to hear them. You can reach out to me through Instagram. I would love to hear from you. And with that, I wish you sweet dreams until next week and of course, as always, happy [00:33:00] training.