The Midlife Feast
Welcome to The Midlife Feast, the podcast for women who are hungry for more in this season of life. I’m your host, Jenn Salib Huber, dietitian, naturopathic doctor , intuitive eating counsellor and author of Eat to Thrive During Menopause. Each episode “brings to the table” a different perspective, conversation, or experience about life after 40, designed to help you find the "missing ingredient" you need to thrive, not just survive.
The Midlife Feast
#171: Sleep in the Messy Middle of Midlife and Menopause with Dr Shelby Harris
Feel like your sleep has gone missing in midlife? Join me and my guest Dr Shelby Harris as we break down why sleep changes in perimenopause, how culture has overhyped “perfect sleep,” and the tools that actually help. Dr. Shelby Harris also explains CBTi in plain language so you can stop chasing hacks and start building steady, restful sleep. We talk about:
• The perfect storm of hormones, mood, and social load
• Why sleep hygiene helps but won’t cure insomnia
• Rethinking the “eight hours” rule and normal wakeups
• HRT benefits and limits for midlife sleep
• CBTi basics: wake time, stimulus control, time-in-bed tweaks
• Letting go of sleep anxiety
• Practical first steps and when to get help
Learn more about Dr Harris at: www. drshelbyharris .com
Follow her on Instagram: @ SleepDocShelby
Check out her books:
The Women’s Guide to Overcoming Insomnia: Get a Good Night’s Sleep Without Relying on Medication
The Essential Guide to Children’s Sleep: A Tired Caregiver’s Workbook for Every Age and Stage
Looking for better sleep solutions in the kitchen? My book, Eat to Thrive During Menopause, has an entire section on sleep - Order wherever books are sold or visit www.menopausenutritionist.ca/Book.
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📚 I wrote a book! Eat To Thrive During Menopause is out now! Order your copy today and start thriving in midlife.
Looking for more about midlife, menopause nutrition, and intuitive eating? Click here to grab one of my free guides and learn what I've got "on the menu" including my 1:1 and group programs. https://www.menopausenutritionist.ca/links
Welcome to the Midlife Feast, the podcast that helps you make sense of your body, your health, and menopause in the messy middle of midlife. I'm Dr. Jen Selie Pieper, intuitive eating dietitian and naturopathic doctor, and author of Eat to Thrive During Menopause. Around here, we don't see midlife and menopause as problems to solve, but as invitations to live with more freedom, trust, and joy. Each week you'll hear real conversations and practical strategies to help you feel like yourself again. Eat without guilt, and turn midlife from a season of survival into a season of thriving. I'm so glad you're here. Let's dig in. A few months ago, I took my nine-year-old nephew, Max, to his first concert. It was a James Blunt concert, and I'm not sure that he's turned into a James Blunt fan, but he had fun for the most part. Until he fell asleep in the middle of the concert. I couldn't believe it, and neither could everyone around us. But hey, he's a kid, but I also started to wonder: is having ovaries a pre-existing condition for sleep problems, especially in midlife? Because until I was in perimenopause, I really had no trouble sleeping. Yes, I had kids who woke me up in all hours of the night for many years, but before and even shortly after that, I was okay. I was what I would call a good sleeper. But in hindsight, because that's always 2020, in hindsight, it really was one of the earliest symptoms of perimenopause. The waking up at 3 o'clock in the morning for no good reason, having trouble falling asleep, and really just starting to get anxious about anything sleep-related. I would worry if I didn't get enough sleep. I would count the hours, I was tracking my sleep, and really started to believe that I was never going to sleep again. I did eventually figure out some things that worked, and I talk about these in this episode, but I was so excited to welcome Dr. Shelby Harris, who is a board-certified behavioral sleep medicine psychologist specialist, and she's Sleep Doc Shelby on Instagram. I highly recommend following her. She also has a couple of books that I'm going to link to in the show notes. But what I wanted to talk to her about, and I think we did a great job in our kind of 25 minutes, is breaking down a lot of the myths about sleep in general, but really midlife sleep, because it can it can get really easy to go down the rabbit holes of what worked for someone else or what worked yesterday and trying to replicate these conditions. And sometimes we get into some ruts and habits that aren't serving our sleep. So I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I do. And I'd love to hear if sleep has been an issue for you. What did you find helpful? What are you still struggling with? Welcome, Shelby, to the Midlife Feast.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for having me, Jen. I'm really happy to be here.
SPEAKER_01:Like so many people that I have met and had on the podcast, you know, I've followed you on Instagram for a long time. Big fan of your work, big fan of how you try and simplify and really reassure people around sleep. I think that's always been my take-home message when I consume your content, is like, oh, I always feel better after I read it or listen to you. I'm like, oh, okay, this is good. This is good.
SPEAKER_00:I feel like our culture has just become these, like these extremes that it's like, it's not helpful and it's not normal either.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. So before we get into the nitty-gritty of all things sleep and midlife, I'd love to hear a little bit more about how did you end up focusing on sleep and women's sleep.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, okay. So it's a little bit of a windy road. But um, when I was a kid, I was a huge sleepwalker. I would sleepwalk, I tried to leave my parents' house. I mean, I had fine upbringing, no problems. I just would try to leave the house. And I was always fascinated with why I was doing this and had no conscious awareness of it in the moment. Uh, and then when I went to when I graduated from college, I took a year off before grand grad school and I was working in medical research, and they put me in a study, actually, it was psychology research. They put me on a study that was looking at treating insomnia and people that were in early rehabilitation centers and rehabs for alcohol uh dependence. And so what we found is if you treated their insomnia, this time they were using medication, this was 25 years ago. But if we were using medication and we helped people's insomnia early on in their recovery, guess what? Their recovery or their relapse rates actually reduced significantly. So if you treat someone's sleep problems, they're not going to go back to alcohol as at all or as fast as they used, they would normally. So it was made just a spark go off on my head saying, why are we not focusing on this more? Why? So I went to graduate school, found a program that had someone on staff who did a lot of work in sleep, and there was a sleep center there as well. And then over the years, I just started noticing more of my patients were women and just kind of all kind of became that specialty without my even realizing it in the moment that that became my specialty. And then I just dove right in.
SPEAKER_01:So so many listeners and patients and people that I've talked to, and my own experience as well, is that you know it feels like our sleep just breaks overnight. It's like all of a sudden we go from being great sleepers to nothing works, I can't stay asleep, I can't fall asleep. What's actually happening? Um, and does having ovaries predispose us? Is it like a preexisting condition to sleep problems, or what's happening?
SPEAKER_00:So there are three things that can happen. So I always call it like the perfect storm of issues that go on. So for women, there's the three issues are really there's the biology. So having, you know, like you said, having ovaries. So it's the the hormonal changes. And what we see is it's not just around midlife. That's when it's the most and it kind of stays for a while. We see it around pregnancy, we see it around when's when someone's about to menstruate. We can see insomnia or even excessive sleepiness. So we see these changes with hormonal fluctuations. Then there's also just more anxiety and more depression in general with women than men. So that's another risk factor or stressor, I should say. And then also there's the social piece that no one really talks about. And this is that demand that women are typically having kids a lot later than they used to. So, and they're also working a lot more than they used to. So they're, it's not like nine to five, or I'm I'm a stay-at-home mom, or whatever it might be. It's we're we're on nonstop. Whatever we're doing, we're just on nonstop. And there, we also are having kids later. So guess what? We have aging family members, aging parents that we're taking care of. So it's all that extra social stress on top of the hormonal changes, on top of any anxiety or depression, that's that perfect storm.
SPEAKER_01:And it really does feel like a perfect storm. Uh, I went into perimenopause early at 37, and I had my last two kids, they're twins at 32. And I very distinctly remember saying to my husband, it is just not fair that the kids finally start sleeping through the night and I stopped sleeping through the night. But like all of these things were happening, right? And because I was still on the younger side and all of my peers still had really young kids, I felt kind of just out of place talking about sleep problems because everyone was talking about their kids' sleep problems, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's very true. And it's something that I think for the better has changed over the past 10 years that people are talking about sleep more, which I mean, when I started out in this field, like there were so few people, people weren't talking about it. And now it's kind of almost overcorrected where it's too much talk about it that is making people either more stressed or wasting money on things that they shouldn't be waste, they don't need to be wasting money on just to get perfection. So it's kind of it's flipped, flip-flopped back and forth in time. It's kind of like nutrition.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you know, I think that people really overdo nutrition in so many ways, like trying to get that perfection that isn't necessary and doesn't exist, right? So okay, I want to dive into some myths because this, you know, I think next to nutrition, probably sleep myths are the ones, the ones that I hear a lot, uh, and I'm sure you do too. So I've got a few, but feel free to throw some in. One of the big ones that I hear is around like sleep hygiene and this belief that you know, if somebody just nails their sleep hygiene, it's gonna fix their chronic insomnia. They just need to make their room darker, colder, or get off their screens. So is that a myth, or is there is that true? It's here.
SPEAKER_00:It's it's kind of a myth. It's mostly it's a myth for people who have insomnia, chronic insomnia. It's kind of like the way we think about it is like dental hygiene. My colleague Rachel Manbror always talked about this. So it's like you brush your teeth, you floss every day, you're gonna help prevent a cavity from happening, right? So you have to think of sleep hygiene that way. If you have an occasional bad night here and there, once every week, once or every few weeks, sleep hygiene might be the thing that fixes it, right? Or maybe it's an easy fix, like noise or something like that. Noise isn't always that easy. Yeah, but some something like that. But once you get a cavity, you can't brush it away. It doesn't work that way.
SPEAKER_01:And no, I like that, right?
SPEAKER_00:And no dentist is gonna say to you, also, stop brushing. So they're gonna say, keep doing the good dental hygiene, but we have to add on something else to fix it. And that's how you have to think of sleep hygiene. So anyone who's out there touting it as a cure, there are some very well-known books out there that I'm not gonna name names, but if they don't talk about things besides sleep hygiene as being insomnia treatments, then they're only talking to people who are generally good sleepers who don't meet the criteria usually for really chronic insomnia. And it's also, in my opinion, that messaging is also very um invalidating to a lot of people who have insomnia because you're just telling them, well, you're not trying your hygiene hard enough when most inside patients with insomnia have tried everything that's on that list to no avail. And it's not any problem, it's not an issue of their own. It's the issue in the messaging. That's the that's the problem.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Anyone who listens to the podcast knows that I love a good analogy, and that might be my new favorite analogy. So I love that.
SPEAKER_00:I've been using it for like 20 years since I heard Rachel say it, and it's it really sticks. It makes sense.
SPEAKER_01:It's a good one. Okay, so another one that I'd like to tackle is this idea that we need eight hours because I hear this a lot. People say, I know that I need eight to nine hours sleep to feel good, and that is where their bar is set. And is it always true that we need eight hours? And does it do our sleep chain needs change over our lifetime?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so it's not really eight specifically. There are a lot of people who are eight, um, but it's really for the vast majority, it's between seven to nine hours. That's where the eight comes from. It's just easy to report because it's in the middle. That's it. All that being said, there are some people that need a little less that are okay and do fine with six. And what are we gonna do? If they feel fine, are we gonna start medicating them just to get to a certain number? It doesn't make sense. So if you're fine on six, then you're fine. And then there are some people who need more than nine. So it's a range, but most people kind of fall on that seven to nine. And then what I also challenge people is when they say, if there's if it's someone who's traditionally a poor sleeper, meaning they like have insomnia or maybe have undiagnosed apnea or anything like that, they might be feeling, or let's go with the insomnia. Maybe they feel like they need more sleep or eight hours exactly, but it's because they feel better. But is it in reaction to many, many bad nights? So it's like you have a really good night and then you have many, many bad nights. So is it really making that good night further emphasized?
SPEAKER_01:That's a really good point. So I recently just came back from the States and Canada. And you know, when you're when you're coming east, especially moving several time zones, that first night you've often really not slept. Like, I don't know about anyone else, but I don't sleep on a red eye. I might get 20 or 30 minutes max. So that that next night, I sleep like the dead. And I wake up after like nine or 10 hours, and I'm like, that was the best sleep. Yeah. And but I can't ever replicate that, even with all the sleep hygiene in the world. Like, I'm a decent sleeper, but like I think that's a good point that if you're not sleeping well and then you have a good night because you're so exhausted, it's almost like a false data point.
SPEAKER_00:Like it's not a real sleep. Exactly. You're gonna have good nights, you're gonna have bad nights. There's individual variation, but if you're someone who's typically a not great sleeper, and then you're only using the best nights as that judgment point, maybe it is your number, maybe it's not. We have to kind of go with an open mind.
SPEAKER_01:That's um that's great advice. Quick pause while we refill our coffee. If you're nodding along to this conversation about midlife sleep, you need to know that I wrote an entire section on this in my new book, Eat to Thrive During Menopause. And yes, it includes all the things that no one told us back in the 90s when we were pulling all-nighters and living on Diet Coke. In the book, I break down the sleep basics and the kitchen connections to sleep, such as how soy can help with some of the symptoms that are waking you up at three o'clock in the morning, why carbs are not the villain, and which ones can help you get more sleep. And I also have lots of easy meal ideas that won't keep you staring at the ceiling all night. If you want sleep that feels less like a mystery and more like something you can support without complicated rules, you'll find it all inside Eat to Thrive during menopause. Order wherever books are sold or find the link in the show notes. Now back to Dr. Harris. So the next one is a myth. I don't, I don't think there's I don't think it's all myth, but the idea that hormone therapy fixes your sleep. So I see a lot of people who say, that's it, I'm caving in. Not that anybody needs to wait for things to get bad for hormone therapy, but often I feel like it's either sleep or hot flashes that really kind of get them into the office. And sometimes they're disappointed that hormone therapy doesn't fix it, um, you know, like a band-aid. So, what's the myth and what's the truth around hormone therapy in sleep?
SPEAKER_00:So both can be true here. So hormone therapy is really useful for some people, but not all. And that's kind of that's it's a big part of the my issue with the messaging behind it is that it fixes all sleep problems. And again, there's no one magic bullet for every single person. And for some people, it really does help, especially progesterone can really help some people. Not everyone can take progesterone. So we have to think about those things when we're thinking about sleep. And then also, if you're disappointed and it didn't do what you hoped it was gonna do, we have other just as effective, if not even more effective, treatments like CBT for insomnia that don't even use medication that are actually more helpful long term for some people. So it's really not one size fits all. It's one treatment, but not the only one.
SPEAKER_01:Um yeah, and I'm one of those people who couldn't take progesterone. It was, you know, I tried hormone therapy. Listeners will have heard the story before, but uh, I just have a really negative reaction mentally, emotionally um to progesterone. So um it even if it helped me sleep, I I couldn't take it, right? So yeah. Um, we're gonna come back and talk about CBTI in a sec. Um so another myth. If I wake in the night, because I hear this a lot, people say, should I stay in bed or should I get up? So I guess it's not a myth so much as a question, but you know, some people feel like, well, if I'm laying down, then that's almost like sleep. But then there's lots of advice that says don't stay in bed unless you're there to sleep. So what's the myth and what's the truth?
SPEAKER_00:So the old school way that was developed in this is something called stimulus controls. So this is stimulus meaning the bed, you're controlling it only for sleep. That's it. Yeah. So it was developed in the 70s uh by a researcher named uh Dick Bootson, and it's a very effective treatment in and of itself, right? So if you're if you're in bed and you're in there for more than about 20 minutes, I don't like the 20-minute rule if you've ever had been told that anyway. It's not good because it makes you look at a clock. Like I don't want you looking at a clock. So just when you start getting annoyed and frustrated, get up, go sit somewhere else. Go back to bed only when you're sleepy. And you might have to rinse and repeat throughout the night. It is a very effective treatment. Now, that being said, I there are a lot of people who are CBTI, which we'll talk about, people who are very hardcore with that. And I used to be, but I've kind of modified it a bit since the pandemic because a lot of people were in studio apartments, they were in like smaller spaces, they didn't have another space to go to. That's the way I think about it is more about your thought process. So if you wake up in the middle of the night and you are frustrated, you are trying to force sleep to happen, right? Effort is the enemy of sleep. So if you're lying there saying, I gotta go to sleep, or you're thinking and worrying, that's all incompatible with bed. That's when you want to get out. Do something else just to pass the time until you're sleepy again. Doesn't mean that reading is gonna make you sleepy. It's just to pass the time as a placeholder or whatever you want to do. Now, if you are in bed and you're like, chill, you don't really have much of a thought process, you're kind of just resting, you're okay. I don't actually mind you staying there and being okay with being awake in bed. It's a little bit of a modification, but nine times out of ten, most people are anxious or upset because they have to get out anyways.
SPEAKER_01:Um, I think that's great advice. And I actually love that modification. I'm a I'm a big fan of CBTI. Um, I've actually had someone on the podcast talking about it before. I've shared before that it essentially solved my perimenopausal sleep issues because I was one of those people that developed this insomnia and perimenopause and then became so anxious about sleep that I had this like two-hour routine of all the things I needed to do. And I became almost like ritualistic. It was like, well, I wore this pajama last night and I went to bed at this time, and I had this as a snack, and it was driving me crazy. Like, and I wasn't sleeping better. Um, and you know, did some of the short-term medications, tried melatonin, like all the things. And when I learned about CBTI, it was a game changer. So um, I'd love to hear your kind of explanation of it, and uh, and then I have some questions. Sure.
SPEAKER_00:So CBT, cognitive behavior therapy, is a lot of people when I say it, they think I'm saying CBD as in the substance. So uh CBT is really it's an older, not in comparison to like psychodynamic, it's not that old, but it's an older therapy kind of idea that or paradigm that's been around for a long time, it's since like the 70s, I'd say. So what it is is it's looking at your behaviors and your thoughts. So it's looking at the behaviors that you're doing that might be reinforcing anything. It doesn't have to be for sleep, it could be for a fear of flying, it could be for depression. It's looking at the things you're doing that are reinforcing it and then the thoughts that you're having that are coming up that might then impact your emotions. So, what we started doing in the 90s, 80s to 90s, is starting to apply it to insomnia. Now, when we apply it to insomnia, it's a little different than regular CBD. So a lot of people think that it's, oh, I don't want to go to therapy again, I've already done CBT. It's not really the same. So the behavior part is really the meat of it, in my opinion. So that's that stimulus control we talked about, the getting out of bed. Then there's sleep hygiene. You still want to do good sleep hygiene. It's not gonna fix it, but if you're drinking a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke before bed, nothing's gonna work. So we want to do that. And then the other piece that gets that's hard, I'm not gonna lie, but it works for a lot of people is this time in bed restriction. So if this is the common sense that thing that we all do is if we're not sleeping, we're gonna try and spend more time in bed, sleep in, nap, go to bed earlier. That's all the stuff that gets you in trouble. So it's about limiting your time in bed to a much more consolidated window window to help you fall asleep and stay asleep faster. So that's the behavioral stuff. Then we add in the cognitive stuff if we need to. So it's that kind of magical thinking about sleep that you were talking about, with the like kind of the which I see all the time. It's that kind of ritual of I have to do this, this, this, in this order, or else I'm not gonna sleep. So it's that it's challenging that magical thinking, challenging what you believe is gonna happen if you do or don't sleep. Because a lot of that, it's the effort trying to get rid of the effort. And then the other thing that we add in sometimes, depending upon the person, is meditation during the day, not at night, to help with the busy brain. And then I might add in like relaxation exercises just to help kind of get your body into a nice relaxed state when you're getting into bed. So it's all that, and it's short term. I mean, I see people in my practice virtually every two weeks, and it's usually between two to eight sessions, sometimes up to 12, but it's a really effective gold, it's the gold standard treatment that we have ahead of medication for for insomnia.
SPEAKER_01:And I'm so glad you brought that up because that was presented at the Menopause Society conference a couple of years ago, and a lot of people were in denial. Denial that it was more effective than hormone therapy, that it was more effective than any sleep medications. And I had, you know, I was I'd probably used it about five years ago. So when this was presented, I was like, this is amazing because I really feel like this is the message that needs to get out there. Um, but very much like the message around cognitive behavior therapy and uh menopause, that message that came out in the UK last year, I feel like it's sometimes met with resistance that people don't want to hear. They I will we all want a quick fix. Like there's nothing um that's just human nature. But how do you sell people on it? Like, how do you convince people that this is actually going to help them?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I I will I will show them the actual papers on it sometimes. If someone's really skeptical, like whenever I even go to like a medical environment, I'm giving talks to physicians, I'm like, here's the guidelines. You're not actually following the guidelines by doing other things. This has the mistake behind it. But then the thing that was that I find is at because I'm a psychologist and a lot of the referrals that come to me are from sleep centers and primary care and um gynecologists. It's I have to go with that messaging of this is therapy, but it's a very different type of therapy that you're than you're used to, which I don't love because then it's also making it seem like the other kind of therapies aren't great. But it's a way, it's like a little bit of an in for me to get patients to start seeing that it can be useful. Like, I'm not gonna analyze you. It's gonna be very do this, do this, do this, go home, report back to me in a few weeks, and then we'll reevaluate. And usually they'll they'll buy into it.
SPEAKER_01:The things in hindsight, what was most helpful for me was um really maintaining, prioritizing like my sleep drive. And so getting up within an hour of the same time, seven days a week, vacations excluded, obviously, um, and illness and all that kind of stuff. But like I get up between seven and eight every day, seven days a week, and going to bed, you know, somewhere between 9 30 and 10 30 every night. Um, and really doing that, like I don't go to I don't get into bed unless I am trying to get to sleep within 30 minutes. Yeah. Um otherwise I don't get to bed. But probably the biggest thing was when I wake up in the middle of the night, I used to have that anxiety of, oh my gosh, I'm gonna be so tired tomorrow. I'm gonna be so drained. Oh my gosh, I'm never gonna be able to do and now I'm just like, yeah, I'm just gonna be tired tomorrow. Whatever, it's no big deal. And even just that, it's fucking key.
SPEAKER_00:Right. That's the number one thing I say to patients. Usually two or three sessions in, I say to them, even before I see your tracking of your sleep diary improve, when I see that you're not as anxious about your sleep, I know you're about to turn a corner. Yeah. Almost every time. When you take that anxiety away from it, it's not saying that you're resigned to it and you're you're doing all you can. So what is it to be to be anxious about it? It's not, it's just letting it go. That's when sleep is going to find its way to you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I don't know if this is a hundred percent true, but somewhere along the way, I incorporated it as a belief that it's also normal to wake up at night that like this idea of eight hours of in an uninterrupted sleep, I had set the bar way too high.
SPEAKER_00:I asked that of everyone. Like, it's like, what do you what do you think a perfect night of sleep is? And then they'll tell me. And I say, you know what, everyone wakes up four to seven times. Any good sleeper wakes up four to seven times a night, they just don't remember. So they after you finish everyone, you have an awakening. We see it on a sleep study. You have an awakening. It's just so quick that you don't remember it. You have amnesia for them. So then once in a while, we might remember them a little bit more. We might go to the bathroom. That might happen. Like, that's the one of the things everyone's like, why do I always wake up at three in the morning or two in the morning every single night? Well, it might be that you're going through a s cycles around 90 minutes per person. It varies based on the person, but around that. So you might actually be waking up at the same time because you're finishing a certain number of sleep cycles. You've trained yourself to look at the clock, you then pathologize it because you think it's bad, and then you get yourself more anxious about it.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, that is fascinating. I had not heard that four to seven wakeup. So um, so thank you for that. You're welcome. Okay, so to start to wrap things up a little bit, we've covered, I think, a lot of ground. There's some amazing information. Um, if somebody is in the throes of not sleeping, what would be a couple of things for them to get started with, to learn about, to maybe start exploring how to get to better sleep?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so don't just accept it. That's the first thing, because that's what most people had had been doing up until a few years ago. And then, and don't let someone tell you that this is normal either, because that was the messaging for a long time, too. So do something about it. So the first thing you could do that I think is it's not gonna necessarily fix it, but it's the first place to start is to come up with a consistent wake time, seven days a week. So you're at the point where an out within an hour is fine, but if it's someone who's really in the beginning throes of it, really get hard and fast with that wake time, no negotiation. And then try to limit go to bed a little later, just nothing drastic, maybe like a half hour, hour later. That might help to make you sleepier at the time that you go to bed. So that's the first thing and be consistent with it. And then what I encourage people to do is to like make sure do a sleep hygiene check. Most people have, make sure all that's fine. It usually is. And then if that's not enough, then I would say, okay, you could do a self-help thing. You could like look at my book for initial things, you could try that. There are apps like the CBTI coach by the US VA is there. Um, and if that's not enough and you've been doing those things for two, three weeks and you're still struggling, then I would say, go and um see someone who's a specialist in sleep. You can get people who do CBTI specifically at um behavioralsleep.org. They have a whole list of providers who are very well qualified. Um, sometimes they know people that you can go to. So there's definitely like a tiered approach. So you can try the self-help stuff, but don't, if it's not working after a few weeks, go get some help. Don't just suffer needlessly.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. I always say like DIY culture has a place in health, but it really shouldn't be like the only thing you think you need to access.
SPEAKER_00:When does the DIY end and need to get help? It's kind of a fine line that gets missed by a lot.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So much of my work is helping people move away from these rigid rules around food and nutrition. And I really just appreciate your common sense, reassuring, but very evidence-based, you know, framework to helping people not only understand sleep, but you know, things that they can do will actually help them get more sleep. So again, thank you so much for your work. Um so as we wrap up, as I always ask my guests, what do you think is the missing ingredient in midlife? Um I would say good sleep.
SPEAKER_00:I figured. Good sleep, it's a pretty obvious answer, but the thing is, is that like if a lot of people might be in therapy, they might be on medication for, let's just say, coming from the psychologist side, from anxiety, depression, they might be getting treatment for those things. If you're not sleeping well and that's not getting addressed, and everyone's like, oh, if you treat your depression first, your sleep will get better. What we usually find is treating sleep either as a side treatment and an adjunctive treatment or first starting with that actually gives you a better baseline. So your mood is better, your irritability, maybe, your cognitive function, all the things that people will often um say are really, I mean, there are issues during midlife, but if you're well rested overall, then on top of that, you're gonna be at a better base. And then the one thing I would add in too is evaluations for sleep apnea. So that's a missing ingredient, too. A lot of people have sleep apnea. Yes. And they don't get evaluated for it.
SPEAKER_01:It's really common in midlife. Amazing. So, so many good take homes in this episode. So thank you so much for your time. We'll have links to all of your things and your books and everything in the show notes. So um, thank you for joining me today.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for all you're doing. I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Midlife Feast. If you're ready to take the next step towards thriving in midlife, head to menopause nutritionist.ca to learn more about my one to one and group coaching programs, free resources, and where to get your copy of Eat to Thrive during menopause. And if you've loved today's conversation and found it helpful, please share it with a friend who needs to hear this and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps so many more people just like you find their way to food freedom and make Midlife confidence. Until next time, remember: midlife is not the end of the story, it's the feast. Let's savor it together.
