Sleep, Stress, and Aging

A couple of years ago, I took a basic class in neuroscience focusing on brain and behavior. As someone who was already in her early 50s and experienced all sorts of post-menopausal challenges, I was particularly interested in restoring the quality of my sleep.

For background, I never really needed 8 hours of sleep in my life, even as a teenager. I was always hungry for reading, traveling, doing interesting things and felt like 6-7 hours of sleep a night, as long as my sleep was deep and restful, was more than enough to restore my energy. That went on for years. When I worked on something exciting and exhilarating, I could even easily function on 5 hours a night.

But then I hit menopause. There was a lot of stress in my life, including worrying about my job and my teenage son, and then the pandemic. I noticed that my sleep became restless and broken. I'd wake up in the middle of the night unable to fall back asleep because my mind was overwhelmed with thoughts - worries, plans, ideas, endless unresolved tasks. Sometimes even full-blown panic attacks.

I remember exactly the first time I physically felt my brain purging toxins without waiting for me to fall asleep. This is a natural part of the sleep cycle, when the brain cleanses itself from the toxins collected during the day. This extremely important function of the brain usually happens in the deep stages of the sleep, unconsciously. So the first time I felt it I literally bolted in bed, freaking out that something is seriously wrong with me. It felt like my brain was washed over by a rough hot wave of water.

Next day, I spoke to my neuroscience colleague about that and he said that what I described was the toxins purge and while it is very rare that people can physically feel it, it did happen to some. He also told me that I should try and sleep better.

Easier said then done. In addition to menopausal changes in my body, I did live under high stress levels. Some friends suggested getting testing and diagnostics to see if I had serious hormonal and metabolic imbalances, or thyroid dysfunction. I hate going to the doctors and rarely get sick, and my body was not failing me, so I didn't feel it was necessary.

Also, from my neuroscience class I learned that as we age, we get less sleep and it loses its quality naturally. Sleep science experiments show that the elderly have a lot less (almost by a third) of REM (deep restorative sleep phase) than younger people and in general sleep less and feel more tired. That's why they need naps in the middle of the day to get re-energized.

I'm not there yet. But at the time I no longer felt that my sleep was good enough to keep me going so I decided to try other things first, before going to the doctors.

The first thing I did was not using any screen devices at least 30 min before the bed time. Instead, I read a paper book. If it still could not help me get to the sleepy stage, I would put on "deep sleep" music on my iphone but keep it at least two feet away from me. The book still works most of the times, and deep sleep music is useful on occasion.

I also tried melatonin-containing sleep aids and CBD gummies (I wrote a story about that experience here on Vocal), which had variable to scary results.

I did notice that I started to sleep much better after I got tenured as a huge job-related stresser was gone, but I still occasionally experience insomnia. I reflected on why that happens and concluded it's mostly because my mind is still working hard on what needs to be done, and Scarlett O'Hara's mantra "I'll think about it tomorrow" is not always convincing for it to calm down.

About two months ago, I came across a SM post by my former student and now a women's health consultant which sounded interesting to me:

I recommend externalizing thoughts - writing down plans, tasks, and ideas, and avoiding work-related cognitive stimulation late in the evening. This small habit alone has already helped many people restore their sleep.

And importantly, this approach is not just intuitive, it is supported by research. A controlled study using polysomnography (the gold standard for sleep measurement) found that participants who spent just five minutes writing a specific to-do list before bed fell asleep significantly faster than those who did not.

The mechanism behind this is known as cognitive offloading - transferring mental load from the brain onto an external medium. This reduces pre-sleep cognitive arousal, which is one of the key drivers of insomnia.

Additional research in behavioral sleep medicine also shows that structured “worry processing” or writing down concerns earlier in the evening can decrease mental activation and improve sleep onset.

In simple terms: your brain doesn’t need to keep looping thoughts if it knows they are safely stored and will be addressed tomorrow.

I tried it and it actually works! I now recommend it to anyone who has a hyperactive mind and has difficulty falling asleep because their brain is still processing tasks. You should try it as well, as this might be also a good writing exercise.