55. Enhance Fertility with Restful Sleep

In this episode, we explore the critical role sleep plays in menstrual cycles and reproductive health. Dr. Monica Minjeur shares practical tips for improving sleep hygiene, discusses the impact of melatonin disruption, and highlights the risks of sleep apnea, particularly for those with PCOS. Through a client story, we illustrate how better sleep can lead to improved fertility and overall well-being.

Transcript

Monica: 0:02

Welcome back to Cycle Wisdom, where we empower women to restore natural menstrual cycles to improve health and promote fertility. I'm your host, Dr. Monica Minger, and I'm so glad you're listening today. On today's episode, I'm going to be talking all about the impact of sleep on your menstrual cycles, and how that applies to overall reproductive health for both men and women. I'll discuss good sleep hygiene and also dive into a discussion about sleep apnea, so you know what signs to watch for. So, as always, let's get started, with a story about a client of mine who we'll call Angela. Now, Angela worked third shift at a factory, so she worked overnight, 11pm to 7am, and she loved her job. But, she was always tired. She came to see me because she had been dealing with infertility for the past two years. She previously had very normal cycles, no major menstrual symptoms, and so we got her started with charting her cycles to evaluate things further. After a thorough investigation of her charting, we ordered some lab evaluation as well as an ultrasound to assess further what was going on. We did identify some hormone abnormalities that were happening, and so over the next couple of months we worked towards helping to balance those hormones with appropriate supplements and medications. I took a deep dive and made sure that her diet was in good shape, she was exercising regularly, and she had overall low stress levels. Other than her sleep, which did cause her a significant amount of distress. Now, she found that even though she was working overnight, sleeping during the daytime, she was still quite tired. And on the nights that she didn't work, she tried to flip her schedule back so that she was sleeping overnight and then awake during the daytime. And this caused a lot of troubles as far as just emotionally dealing with that flip. Yes. And she also felt very stressed on trying to figure out what was the best way to get sleep, especially when she felt so tired. During the time that we were doing our complete evaluation, Angela had the opportunity to change her shift at work and she was able to now work daytime hours. Without making any other major changes, she began to notice significant improvement in her sleep within a couple of weeks. She noticed that she was no longer tired during the day, her cycles became much more regular, and her hormones balanced without us even changing the supplements or medications, all within a few weeks. Now, it did take some time to make sure everything was completely back on track and get her back off of some of her supplements and medications, but she was able to achieve a pregnancy naturally about four months later. Now, you don't always need to completely change the shift you work and we know that some people just have very erratic sleep schedules for whatever reason. But it is important to know the role that melatonin plays with your overall hormones in allowing a regular cycle to emerge. So let's talk a little bit about what normally should happen. Is that normally, just before you're getting ready to go to bed, your body will start to secrete more melatonin naturally. This melatonin that you have in your system helps you to say, Hey, it is time to start winding down to get some rest and get some sleep for the night. However, one of the biggest thing that disrupts that natural melatonin production is going to be light. So this is going to be light that comes from actual light bulbs and everything around you, but also is going to be light that comes from screens. Transcribed Anything that is artificial light, even if it's turned down really, really low, is going to disrupt that natural melatonin production. When your melatonin is disrupted, you are going to have poor sleep quality. You're going to have a harder time with falling asleep. And the biggest changes that we notice from a hormone standpoint for men, we see that it will decrease their gonadotropin releasing hormone, and it will decrease their luteinizing hormone. And both of these things are responsible for sperm production. For women, if they have a disruption of their melatonin, it's going to decrease again their luteinizing hormone, and it's also going to decrease their estradiol levels. And thus, it's going to play a huge role when it comes to ovulation, how well your body is able to ovulate that cycle, what the endometrial lining is going to be, what you're observing from a standpoint, because those estrogen levels are lower. And so not surprisingly, we find that in many studies, they show that women who work night shifts or work overnight have a 60 percent increase in early miscarriages. And they postulate that's because you don't have that natural secretion of melatonin that increases during pregnancy. Normally, melatonin during pregnancy helps to increase progesterone levels and decrease uterine contractions. This is part of the reason that women oftentimes feel so tired and so sick. sleepy is because that natural melatonin is increasing. And if you're working a third shift or working overnight, you don't have that natural time frame that melatonin is getting secreted, you're already starting off with lower levels than what you should be having. So how can women fix this? You know, not everybody can be like Angela and just completely switch the time that they work. However, there are things that you can do to help with good sleep hygiene. And one of the most important things that I talk with all of my clients about is eliminating any artificial light. Two hours prior to bedtime. Now this primarily is going to be anything that is going to be screen time. So television, computer, uh, tablet device, phones especially. Anything that has that artificial light is going to impact your brain's ability to start secreting that natural melatonin. The other thing that can be very helpful is as you're starting to get ready for bedtime is start to turn down the lights in your home. Turn off any overhead lights if you're able to do so. Utilize a softer setting or warm lighting and a lamp if you need to have some light on, but just start to get the lights turning down. Other things that can be helpful would include some sort of nighttime routine. Get your body used to thinking, hey, this is the time that I need to go to bed. So that may involve reading from a regular book, gentle stretching, some quiet time, some meditation, and also it's important to avoid eating at least two hours prior to bedtime to help your body get in the natural routine of that winding down. Another thing to be mindful of is how dark it is in your room. So a good test is that if you are laying in bed, and you put your hand in front of your face, maybe about 12 inches away, Are you able to see your hand? If you're able to see your hand, that means that there is too much ambient light in the room. Now this could be from night lights, from an alarm clock that has some brightness to it, from the light on your cell phone if it's in your room, or even the street lights, even if you have some curtains on your windows. So whenever possible, we want to try See how dark you can make it in your room at nighttime. There's actually been some amazing studies done over the years that look at the impact of just getting the room darker to help improve ovulation and fertility. And what we know is that if we are disrupting melatonin, even if it's in the middle of the night, even if your eyes are closed, that that disruption of melatonin can impair your body's ability to have that deep restful sleep, which then throws off your hormones. Down the road. Now, if you're somebody who is just not getting enough sleep, again, we're aiming for at least eight hours of sleep per night for adults. And if you're nowhere near that, my recommendation is not to say, okay, just put yourself to bed two hours earlier, because you will sit there and you will just think about the time ticking away. Instead, if you normally would go to bed at 11 PM. For the first week, start by saying, I'm going to back up by 15 minutes. I'm going to go to bed at 1045 instead and do that for a week. And then the following week, back it up by another 10 or 15 minutes. Even those small incremental changes can make a huge impact in the long run. For most people, we're used to waking up at a certain time every morning, and so just trying to sleep in typically is not going to be an effective way to get more hours of sleep overnight. This is why we talk about trying to start sleeping a little bit earlier each night, and if you start with the wind down routine as I talked about here, decreasing the lights. It's eliminating the screen time, avoiding eating before bedtime, and having that nighttime routine that you do, all of those things are going to help impact a longer amount of sleep that you have, as well as helping with the quality of sleep by making sure that you're getting it very dark in your room at night. So let's shift gears a little bit and talk about another sleep disturbance that can have significant impacts when it comes to your overall menstrual and reproductive health. And that is sleep apnea. Now, there are lots of different things that can be risk factors for sleep apnea. And what we know is that most women before menopause are more likely to will not have troubles with sleep apnea. In fact, only less than 2 percent of the time are we finding obstructive sleep apnea in premenopausal women. However, there are certain risk factors that can increase your susceptibility for being diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea. Notably, a family history of sleep apnea, if you are overweight, or if you are somebody who has a diagnosis of PCOS. Now, 80 percent of the time, women with PCOS will also be struggling with their weight. If you struggle with your weight and you have a diagnosis of PCOS, you are 30 times more likely to have obstructive sleep apnea than if you didn't have PCOS. So it's very important that we're screening for this. Now, sleep apnea is more than just feeling tired or having any sleep problems. The risks of untreated sleep apnea go well beyond just sleep dysfunction. In fact, we know that people with obstructive sleep apnea have an increased risk of stroke, heart arrhythmias, heart attack, diabetes, dementia, and even early death. So it's so important to know if you have obstructive sleep apnea that we get treatment for it, not just to help with your sleep or your fatigue levels, but really to impact your overall health for the long term. So how do I know if I have sleep apnea? What symptoms might I notice? Most of the common ones we're going to see are going to be if you are having daytime fatigue. I'm exhausted. I just feel like I cannot get enough sleep. If you wake up in the morning and you have headaches first thing in the morning, that's another sign that we want to pay attention to. The more common ones that people think about are if you are snoring or if you ever wake up gasping for air or feel like you're choking. Other things we look at from a standpoint of reproductive health is for men, if you are struggling with any erectile dysfunction, that can be a sign of obstructive sleep apnea. If you are dealing with infertility, both men and women can have troubles with obstructive sleep apnea that lead to those fertility concerns. As I mentioned earlier, if we're not having that natural melatonin secretion, if we're not getting into that deep REM sleep, it significantly impacts the ability of the body to produce luteinizing hormone and go on to have appropriate reproductive qualities. In men specifically who have untreated sleep apnea, we find a decrease in the total testosterone numbers as well as a decrease in sperm motility and vitality. We also note that men with untreated sleep apnea tend to have increased fasting blood glucose and insulin levels. The worse their sleep apnea is, the worse the dysfunction on these hormone levels and on the sperm counts, and even an oxygen level that drops below 90%. Is problematic. If we're treating sleep apnea, there are lots of different ways to treat it. Most commonly, people will end up being placed on a CPAP machine. And in order to have appropriate treatment, you must wear it at least 4 hours per night, at least 70 percent of the nights. Obviously, more is going to be better if you can keep it on the entire time that you're sleeping. sleeping, we are more effectively treating that sleep apnea and improving the symptoms long term so that we aren't having those greater risks from your overall health as well as a reproductive standpoint. Imagine if you were able to improve your overall sleep quality and quantity by adjusting your sleep hours and improving your sleep hygiene. You now have some great tips to start in the right direction to get your room darker when you sleep. to focus on improved sleep hygiene in a way that will help to improve your overall health and promote fertility. If you're ready to work with our elite team of healthcare professionals, go to our website, radiantclinic. com to schedule a free discovery call with me and learn more about our package based pricing for comprehensive care. We are currently able to see people for in-person appointments in the Cedar rapids, Iowa area, or can arrange for a telehealth visit. If you live in the states of Iowa, Illinois, or Minnesota. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please share this podcast with someone in your life who would benefit from our services. Remember to subscribe to this podcast for more empowering content that I look forward to sharing with you on our next episode of cycle wisdom.