98. Restoring Sleep: Impact on Hormones, Ovulation & Sperm Quality

Can Better Sleep Help You Get Pregnant or Fix Your Hormones?
You’re tracking ovulation, eating right, maybe even taking medications—but could poor sleep be holding you back? In this episode, Dr. Monica Minjeur breaks down the powerful connection between sleep and fertility. From shift work and insomnia to hormone disruption and cycle irregularity, you’ll learn why sleep is more than self-care—it’s reproductive care.

Featuring Heather’s story, a night-shift nurse who conceived naturally after improving her sleep, plus science-backed tips to reset your rhythm and support ovulation.

 Ready to correct the underlying causes of your fertility concerns?
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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 Minjeur, and I'm so glad you're listening today. You're tracking your ovulation, you're eating the right foods, may be even taking supplements or on prescription medications, but are you ignoring one of the most powerful fertility boosters out there? Your sleep? Today we're diving into how sleep impacts your reproductive hormones, ovulation, and even egg and sperm quality. We'll also talk a bit about shift work, insomnia, and the best science backed ways to improve your sleep for better fertility outcomes. So let's get started, as always, with a story about a patient who will call Heather. Now Heather came to me when she had been trying to conceive for over a year. She worked in the emergency room at our local hospital, and she was a nurse frequently having rotating night shifts. During the daytime, she often slept in her noisy downtown apartment. And when she came to us, she noted that she had irregular cycles, significant fatigue and mood swings. Her OB doctor had told her that everything looked fine on her lab work and referred her to IVF. However, Heather knew that she was ovulating late. She had actually been tracking her cycles even before coming to see us, and she also noticed that she had a short luteal phase. So from the time that she ovulated until her menstrual cycle began was only about nine or 10 days during her intake. At our clinic, we noticed that one of the lifestyle pieces we screened for included sleep quality, and this was a major stressor for Heather. Her charting showed ovulation was inconsistent and she was possibly having some cycles where she didn't ovulate at all. We also asked questions about stress reduction, how else we would be able to help with this sleep situation and ways in order to help her improve not only her quantity of sleep, but her quality of sleep. Part of our plan included working together to change some of the lifestyle pieces in order to improve her sleep schedule with her circadian rhythm and to still reduce her stress levels even while she still worked different shifts. Within four months, Heather's cycles began to normalize. We saw that her luteal phase lengthened out to about 13 or 14 days, and her ovulation was consistently occurring earlier in her cycle, closer to day 16 or 18, with ongoing support changes in her supplements, as well as some prescription adjustments, Heather was able to conceive naturally six months later. More importantly, she felt like she was sleeping better, her health had improved, and she no longer had the significant fatigue and irritability that she had been struggling with prior to coming to see us. So many of us know intuitively that sleep is important, but how does it impact what's going on with your hormones? Sleep is foundational for regulating your hormones, especially your melatonin. Cortisol, estrogen and progesterone. If we don't have enough sleep, that will raise our cortisol levels or that stress hormone, which then suppresses a hormone called gonadotropin releasing hormone. Now, gonadotropin releasing hormone or GNRH is really important when it comes to how our body regulates ovulation hormones, things like follicle stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone. All of this also then impacts your menstrual cycle regularity. If you're not ovulating consistently, it's much more difficult to see a regular menstrual cycle, so it becomes this domino effect where sleep increases the cortisol, which then decreases that gonadotropin releasing hormone, which then decreases and impacts your ability to ovulate consistently. More importantly, poor sleep also has many other symptoms or side effects, like significant fatigue, irritability, mood swings, metabolism changes, which can actually cause increased weight and poor sleep can also impact insulin resistance, which is very common in women who are dealing with PCOS or polycystic ovarian syndrome. So what does the science say? There's actually been many studies done over the past few decades, and some of the more notable ones show that women who sleep less than six hours a night are anywhere from 10 to 20% less likely to be able to conceive as compared to those who are getting more than six hours per night. In men sleep deprivation has also been shown to reduce testosterone levels, decrease sperm quality and decrease the ability of sperm to move as well as sperm counts itself. And so when it comes to fertility, it's not just about making sure that the female partner is getting enough sleep, but also so important to make sure that we are screening for and addressing the male factors of lifestyle that may also be playing a role. Another very important aspect of sleep that can impact fertility is sleep apnea. Now, I discussed this quite a bit in episode number 55, so if you have concerns about sleep apnea for yourself or your partner, go check out that episode because we dig deep into what sleep apnea is, how to treat it, and why it makes such a big difference when it comes to getting good sleep. Sleep isn't just about feeling rested. It is one of your body's most important hormonal tools. So let's talk a little bit about shift work and in a case like we dealt with with Heather, how that impacted fertility risk. Now, many studies have been done over the past 40 years that examine the risks of conceiving as well as pregnancy, especially in women who work the night shift. And there has been at least some mild increased risk of gestational diabetes, gestational hypertension, or high blood pressure, preterm birth and miscarriage. Now, it's not a hundred percent clear if this is primarily just a female partner thing, but we know that these risks do increase even further if the male partner is a night shift worker. Leading us to believe that even more issues with DNA fragmentation or quality of the sperm, as well as lower sperm counts in men can also increase these risks. A study done in 2020 found that women who were working rotating night shifts had a 33% increased risk of fertility issues. And this was especially common in women under the age of 35, and also more common in women who had been working night shifts for more than five years. These irregular sleep cycles that we can have, especially within the night shifts, can disrupt your circadian rhythm. This is the rhythm in your body and in your brain that tells your body, this is the time to sleep and this is the time to be awake. And this is closely tied to this hormonal access that we know as the hypothalamic. Pituitary ovarian access. Now that's a mouthful, but basically what it means is all the different areas that work together in your body to produce the hormones that are responsible for reproduction can be thrown off when we have these irregular sleep cycles. Now, I'm not advocating that nobody should work night shift. For some people that is their happy place. That is where it works best for them or maybe that's what works best for their family. But as was the case with Heather, some of the things we worked on were the practical tips to make sure that she was able to get adequate sleep and good quality sleep during the times when she was sleeping during daytime hours. So one of the things we always will talk about with our night shift workers is what does it look like to try and keep a consistent sleeping schedule rather than flipping back and forth between nighttime or daytime sleeping? Now, sometimes that makes sense and sometimes that just doesn't work out. But what we know is that for most people, if we can get a regular rhythm going, that does a better job as far as our body and our brain connection of being able to regulate that circadian rhythm. If you're sleeping during the daytime, we also absolutely must have it completely dark in your room. So for most people, that means getting blackout curtains, getting rid of any artificial light that may be coming, and oftentimes getting some sort of white now noise machine to drown out any background noise of daytime that normally would be happening. It is also important to keep that consistent sleep routine, like I mentioned, trying to go to bed at the same time, trying to wake up at the same time, and that can really help In order to get that rhythm natural and what's going on to that, your body is understanding this is when I should be awake, this is when I should go to sleep. And then the last piece we talk about is wearing blue light blocking glasses before bedtime. Now, depending upon what you're doing before you go to bed, sometimes my, our night shift workers may go home and they may go right to bed. Sometimes they stay up for a few hours and then go to bed. But blue light blocking glasses can be really beneficial for helping to get rid of that artificial light that's coming in and helping to you. Encourage your body to secrete more melatonin in order to signal that it is sleep time. Now, just a word of caution. There's a lot of glasses out there that are advertising to be blue light glasses. I would just recommend making sure that you check that you have a good high quality blue light glasses. That actually filters out the blue light. So find either a way to check them or check and see the spectrometer reading on them because many blue light glasses that we have tested at our clinic are actually just plain plastic and don't actually block the blue light at all. So let's talk a little bit about insomnia. What if you're somebody who either doesn't fall asleep easily or maybe wakes up overnight? Frequently, chronic insomnia can contribute to higher levels of cortisol that that stress hormone, which reduces the surges of luteinizing hormone and can delay or prevent ovulation. So luteinizing hormone needs to surge or increase in order to signal your body in order to ovulate. Additionally, women with chronic insomnia can also be seen to have much lower progesterone levels during their luteal phase, which is an especially vulnerable time for implantation. If we have those lower progesterone numbers, we typically are also going to see the shortened luteal phases as we did with in Heather's case. And when we have a shorter time from ovulation until your next menstrual cycle begins. We are decreasing our ability to have enough days of implantation to occur before the next menstrual cycle begins. So what are some ways that you can improve your sleep and support hormones? If you're struggling with insomnia? The first goes back to the same thing I mentioned earlier is establish a consistent bedtime even on the weekends. So many times people will try and reward themselves on the weekends and say, oh, I made it through a tough week. I'm gonna stay up a little bit later. We're gonna watch that movie or. I'm gonna stay up late at night, or we're gonna go out on a late date night or go out partying with friends. And really that shifting of the daytime and weekend and nighttime hours can really throw a wrench in what your body is trying to do as far as supporting that natural circadian rhythm. Another really powerful tool that you can utilize is trying to avoid any of that artificial light or screen time one to two hours before bedtime. Again. Normally what would happen is is that as it starts to get darker outside, our brains will naturally secrete more melatonin. Which tells us that it's time to go to sleep. If we are getting that artificial light, either from overhead lights or from screens, it is telling our brain, Hey, it is still light outside. It is not time to go to sleep, and your melatonin levels will be lower, making it harder to fall asleep. And then the final thing that you can do as far as helping with that light and darkness is first thing in the morning when you wake up, get as much natural light as you can. Ideally, if you're able to get outside in the sunshine and go for a 10 or 15 minute walk, that's fantastic. If you can't do that for some reason, at least open the blinds as best as you can. Stand in front of the window for a while and see if you can get some of that natural sunlight into your eyes to really help you get up and get kicking in the morning. Now if you are struggling with sleep in general, here's a few other things that we recommend at our clinic in order to help with your sleep. The first is to pay attention to what it is that you're eating before bedtime. If you are having a diet that is rich in protein and having a good amount of protein with your dinner, it will help to avoid that sugar crash overnight. That can happen. We also don't wanna be eating too much carbs or too little carbs right before bedtime because we wanna have a nice balance of that blood sugar, and that can oftentimes help to prevent nighttime sweating or overnight awakenings, or waking up in the morning feeling shaky. Again, as I had mentioned that morning sunlight exposure can really be beneficial as far as helping to get that good balance of the circadian rhythm, as well as getting it dark when you go to bed at night and keeping that same consistent bedtime and wake time every day, even on the weekends, can make a huge difference. Another thing we often will talk about is using our fertility awareness tracking systems in order to evaluate how your sleep patterns affect mucus quality cycle length and ovulation day. In many of our women, especially those who are working shifts or working overnight, we encourage them to keep track of when they had their nighttime work, how many hours of sleep they were getting, because oftentimes if we see that things go sideways with their charting. We're able to track back and say, oh yeah, you know what? The week before that I was working nights, and that perhaps disrupted my ovulation. So really even just being able to understand where are the pieces that may be playing a role with your sleep that are modifiable versus things that are just going to be a part of life, and really then starting to say, how can we make it a priority to get better sleep? Your fertility isn't just about your ovaries and your hormone labs. It's also about restoring all of the systems that support your body's natural design, including your sleep. We look at this as an essential part of restoring a healthy cycle, and if you're dealing with irregular cycles, infertility or burnout from shift work, we can help you to create a plan that supports your whole self, not just your hormones. Imagine if better Sleep wasn't just a nice idea, but it was the missing piece to unlocking your fertility. At Radiant Clinic, we offer personalized care that looks at your hormones, lifestyle, and underlying causes to actually solve the health issues so you can improve your health and promote fertility. If you're ready to work with our elite team of healthcare professionals, go to our website, radiant clinic.com to schedule a free discovery call and learn more about our package based pricing for comprehensive care. We are currently able to see people for in-person appointments in our Cedar Rapids, Iowa Clinic, or can arrange for a telehealth visit if you live in many different states across the us. Check out our website for current states that we can serve medical clients and let us know if your state is not listed to see if we can still cover you there as we are constantly expanding our reach, please note that our fertility educators are able to take care of clients no matter where they live. 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.