Latest / Spacious Success / 09 | Wide Awake at 2:22am? Why Women Are Struggling With Sleep (and What to Do About It)

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09 | Wide Awake at 2:22am? Why Women Are Struggling With Sleep (and What to Do About It) · Spacious Success

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  Hi, it's Christy. Welcome back to Spacious Success. Have you noticed that sleep which
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  used to feel effortless, enjoyable, suddenly feels like a nightly battle, a chore? Are
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  you wide awake at 2.20am, yet again? You see your heart racing, your brains in a full
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  blown brainstorming session, you're exhausted, but you can't even will yourself to go back
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  to sleep. Does this sound familiar? It does. For me, it was the case for many years. I lived
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  on little to no sleep. I ignorantly thought that I could power through, but sleep doesn't
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  just impact your performance, it dictates your performance. And right now, women are struggling
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  with sleep at higher rates than men, and this is contributing to the gender well-being
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  gap. Today, I want to talk about why and what you can do in real-time when you wake up in
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  the middle of the night, or when you're running on fumes the next day, because let's be
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  honest, the show must go on.
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  Hi, I'm Dr. Christy Goodwin, a neuroperformance scientist, speaker and executive coach who
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  learned the hard way that chasing success can come at a cost. After burnout landed me
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  in hospital, I made it my mission to help ambitious women who are done trading their health
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  and happiness for high performance. On spacious success, I share science-backed strategies
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  and real stories to help you flourish as a female at work and beyond so you can stop
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  paying the success tax. If I'm honest, for years, I'll admit that I wore my lack of sleep
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  like a badge of honor. I often would brag about how little sleep I got. Late nights finishing
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  webinars or hopping on early morning planes, calls going to the gym at ridiculous o'clock,
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  and in between, a restless brain that just couldn't shut off at 2am. I told myself this
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  is just part of being an ambitious woman. I'll catch up later on, but I never caught up.
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  Instead, I became more irritable at home, less focused at work, more emotional about the most
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  trivial, mundane things. My poor husband, my poor kids, my sleep habits, if I'm honest,
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  were one of the chief reasons that I ended up burnt out and in a code red emergency ward.
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  Tune in to episode one if you want to hear more about that one. You see, I work with many
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  high performing ambitious women and poor sleep sabotages their wellbeing, their performance.
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  I see this with so many high performing women that I speak to and coach. And here's what I've
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  learned. When your sleep starts to unravel, your entire life unravels. So why are women,
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  especially ambitious mid-career or high-career women struggling so much with our sleep?
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  The numbers tell the story and corroborate how you're probably feeling. Nearly 60% of women
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  report that regular sleep problems compared to 45% of men. Women are twice as likely,
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  twice as likely to experience insomnia, especially during perimenopause and menopause years.
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  A 2024 Women's Health Survey showed that almost half of the female respondents
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  said that poor sleep was one of their top health concerns. And here's why. Here's why we are
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  struggling with sleep. Hormonal shifts. You see, progesterone normally calms down our nervous system.
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  As it fluctuates and eventually drops in perimenopause, sleep often becomes lighter. It becomes more
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  fragmented. It becomes harder to get. Estrogen, which normally buffers us against stress hormones,
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  well, as it declines and fluctuates, well, cortisol begins to hit harder and last longer.
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  The result? You often wake up between two and three a.m. with a racing heart and never
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  ending to do list and you can't get back to sleep. You see, there's something called the stress
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  carryover. You see, when you're a cortisol, if stress hormone runs high all day, it spills into
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  the night. Your natural cortisol pulse should see you waking up between six and seven a.m.
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  Now, if your cortisol begins to peak early, which it should between two or three a.m.,
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  if your cortisol cut was already full when you got into bed, then it simply overflows.
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  The result? These early morning awakenings, the tired but wired nights, the dragging yourself
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  through the next day, feeling miserable, distracted and exhausted. Yet, this has so many women are living
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  as low-res, to power down versions of themselves, living on a cocktail of cortisol and caffeine.
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  You see, our modern habits are contributing to this. It's not just screens, at least not in the way
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  that you might think. We've recently debunked the whole blue light myth and the panic. The real
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  problem, what we're doing at night. You see, our late night scrolling, our triaging, our team's
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  chats, our revenge bed time procrastination, you know, where we tell ourselves just one more Netflix
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  episode and suddenly it's five episodes later. Well, all of these things hype around our brain
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  and delay the onset of our sleep. Layering inconsistent sleep and wait times thanks to
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  work calls, travel, sick kids or shifting schedules, plus really poor wind down routines,
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  power down routines, and your brain starts to link bed time and stimulation, not to bed time and
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  rest. If you're running at 110 kilometres all day, emails, decisions, logistics, problem solving
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  kids and then at night you expect your brain to just instantly switch off. Well, I'm sorry,
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  but that's not how it works. Here's the fix. Cognitive offloading. Before bed, write down your top
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  tend to do's. Science actually tells us that it helps your brain to let go and fall asleep faster.
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  You see, high performance starts with recovery, recovery starts with your sleep and sleep starts
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  with a power down, wind down routine that tells your brain it's safe to shut down.
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  So if you're lying awake at 2am thinking what's wrong with me, the answer is nothing,
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  it's biology, it's your body whispering to you and it's solvable with science.
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  So what can you actually do? I want to split this into two parts because from lived experience,
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  when we wake up, when it's 2.22am and your mind is racing, your heart is pounding and all you
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  can think of is I'm never getting back to sleep, what can you do? Firstly, get out of bed.
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  If you're awake for more than 20 minutes, don't stay there. Otherwise, your brain starts to link
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  your bed with panic and problem solving. We make these unhelpful cognitive associations.
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  Move to a quiet dim space. Read a book, watch TV, do something passive and when you begin to
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  feel tired again, jump back into bed. Number two, use your eyes to reset. I was really skeptical when
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  I saw this one on Instagram but I will admit I've used it several times and so have my clients
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  and believe it or not, it works. What do you do? You look to the right, you look to the left,
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  you look up, you look down and then you circle your eyes both ways. This bilateral stimulation
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  calms down your nervous system and gives your mind a non-anxious task to perform.
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  Number three, something called cognitive shuffling. Pick a word like buff. Then list objects that
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  start with each letter. So for B, balloon, banana. A, anchor, apple. Picture each one clearly. This
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  scrambles your racing thoughts and nudges your brain back into sleep mode. Number four, remove
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  your phone and the clock from your room. Clock watching spikes your cortisol. No good ever comes
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  from seeing 304 AM. Oh my goodness, only three hours until I actually need to wake up. And number
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  five, you might want to try non-sleep deep rest. Guided protocols on apps like Revery or Insight
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  Timer are a progressive muscle relaxation. This is a pseudo form of sleep and it mimics the
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  brainwave sleep or state I should say when you are sleeping. The next thing, well, what can you do
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  if you didn't get enough sleep the night before? What can you do when you've had a really crappy
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  night sleep, either in terms of the quality or the quantity that you've got? Number one, try extra
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  creatine. Now, if you haven't heard of creatine, I want you to think of creatine. It's not just
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  for gym bros and junkies trying to bulk up at the gym on the squat rack. New research, it tells us
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  that it can be a powerful tool for females and males for your brain, especially after you've had
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  poor sleep. Research actually has told us recently that higher what we call an acute dose of creatine
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  can partially reverse the cognitive impact of sleep deprivation. It improves our brain energy
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  metabolism. What does this mean in real life? Well, you'll get faster processing speed, you'll get
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  sharper focus, believe it or not, even when you're sleep deprived, you'll get better short-term
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  memory and we even think it can improve our prefrontal cortex's function. The part of the brain
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  that we attribute to decision-making and planning that the CEO or the air traffic control system
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  of the brain, compared to a four-night sleep, that's right. In one high performance protocol, I
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  tested, I took 20 grams of creatine instead of my regular five grams, so that's about four times
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  my usual dosage. It's aggressive, but under acute sleep loss, it catched me from feeling foggy
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  and flatlined. Now, it's important we still need more research on the long-term use of creatine,
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  but this isn't a daily crutch, but on the mornings after your sleep has gone sideways,
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  creatine can be a surprisingly effective cognitive buffer. Now, always check with your health
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  professional and certainly don't start with 20 grams. The next one is to delay your caffeine by
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  19 minutes. Now, hear me out, I know it sounds counterintuitive, but here's why. Caffeine blocks
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  our adenosine receptors. These are the sleep pressure molecules that should build up in our brain
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  during the day. They're what make us feel tired, they're what make us yawn at night. Now,
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  if you drink a coffee or a caffeinated drink immediately after waking, you block the receptors
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  without clearing out your adenosine. So, the caffeine lingers and it will lead to a dreaded 3 pm
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  crash in your energy. Add to that, your cortisol is already high, naturally high in the morning,
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  so coffee on top of that cortisol spike will just amplify your stress response. So, my solution,
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  ideally, weight 60, maybe even 90 minutes after waking up. You'll feel more alert,
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  you'll avoid the afternoon energy and focus slump, like we call it, biscuit o'clock,
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  and you'll give your body's natural cortisol system time to regulate.
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  Number three, try a napachino. This is one of my favorite protocols, and it was coined by Daniel
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  Pink. This protocol combines the restorative power of a nap with the alertness that you do get
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  from caffeine, and here's how it works. Drink a coffee. Immediately afterwards, take a 20 to 30 minute
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  nap. As you wake, the caffeine will kick in, it usually takes around about 15 minutes or so to hit
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  your bloodstream. By the time the caffeine kicks in, the result will be boosted alertness,
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  focus, and mood because you've had a well timed nap. Now, the timing matters. Ideally,
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  you want to do it before 1 to 2 pm each day, and you also need to know that caffeine has a half
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  life of around 4 to 6 hours. So, a late night napachino can disrupt your subsequent sleep. We all
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  process caffeine in different ways. We metabolise it in different ways, so there is some individual
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  variation there. And number four, have a cold shower. For years, I loved getting in the ocean
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  in the middle of winter. Don't get me wrong. Getting in there, the entry is really painful. Every
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  cell in my body screams, what are you doing? Get out, but that euphoric feeling afterwards is
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  incredible. And this is why. We know that cold exposure triggers a surge in epinephrine,
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  nor epinephrine, and dopamine. These are the neurochemicals that sharpen our attention,
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  boost our energy, and elevate our mood. Some studies have suggested that cold exposure
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  can increase our baseline levels of these neurochemicals by an estimated 250 to 500%.
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  There is no known legal plaintiff illegal substitutes that will get you that high that quick.
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  The next thing I do if I haven't slept well is to get some morning sunlight. This one's really
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  simple, it's free, and the research is clear. 10 minutes of sunlight, ideally within the first
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  hour of waking up, will help not only reset your circadian rhythm, because magically 12 to 14 hours
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  later your body will start to produce your sleep hormone melatonin, but it will also boost your mood,
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  your energy, by activating part of your brain called your hypothalamus. So getting outside in
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  sun, 20 minutes on an overcast day, think of it at that morning sunlight boost as pressing the
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  start button on your body clock. So here's what I want you to learn from today's episode.
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  If you found yourself struggling with sleep lately, ladies, I want you to know it's not a
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  weakness. It's your biology colliding with stress, intersecting with hormones, and modern life.
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  Ambitious women that I coach, they don't need another lecture about going to bed earlier,
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  nor do they need to be told to stay off their phones before bed, because we now know that
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  research tells us that doesn't impact our sleep in the way we once thought.
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  But what we do need is evidence-based science-backed protocols that will not only help us fall asleep,
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  which we'll talk about in another episode, but help us go back to sleep or deal with the
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  shortfall the next day. We need real tools when we wake up at 2.22am and science-backed ways to
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  reset the next day. So this week I want you to remember sleep problems aren't a personal failure.
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  They're just a signal from your body. A way that your body can whisper to you.
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  I want you to listen to your body's signals, and you don't have to wait. I want to say you don't
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  have to wait for a perfect night's sleep to show up well. The reality is we're all going to have
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  crappy sleep from time to time. You just need to know what to do when your sleep goes sideways.
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  In our next episode, we're going to explore cold exposure and why women need a very different
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  approach to ice baths and cold showers than the bros that you might be watching on Instagram.
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  Until then, if you're listening to this at 2.22am, turn off the clock, get out of bed,
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  grab your book, and know this. Your body hasn't failed you. It just needs the right cues to reset,
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  and tomorrow will be a new day. I'm Dr. Christie Goodwin, a neuroperformance scientist,
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  speaker, author, executive coach, and mum. Thank you for listening to Spacious Success.
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  If today's episode resonated, please subscribe so that you don't miss an episode.
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  And I'd love it if you could share this with a friend who's been whispering to you all the time,
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  I'm so tired under her breath. She needs this reminder that she's not alone,
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  and there are some simple science back tools that will help her go back to sleep
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  and or cope the next morning. Until next time, thanks for listening.