Hey fellow female athletes strapped into this hormonal rollercoaster (perimenopause) that is leaving us desperate for sleep! What are your best tips for securing a good sleep?
Maybe you are someone who has already passed the worst of the roller coaster and gliding back into the station: how did you navigate waking up at 3am, tossing and turning? Brain fog?
Best tips for:
Nutrition?
Bedtime rituals (bath, hot shower, ice bath, sauna?)
Evening yoga? Breath work?
Journaling? I read about “letting go” list. Essentially like a brain dump that helps the brain let go of all the racing thoughts.
Bedroom temperature? I’m afraid I’m going to freeze hubby I feel like I want to move back to the deep freeze of North Finland and sleep in a tent outside.
Evening music? Reading? Dimmed lights?
Someone tell me their magic, cause I’m desperate to have better sleeps.
A bit of a strange one, but I find distracting your brain with thinking of lists helps; something like trying to name all the oceans in the world, or trying to think of a fruit for every letter of the alphabet.
I do that to help me get back to sleep - it stops me thinking about other stuff.
Thanks @yvette.merga appreciate it!
Naming oceans it is!
Or perhaps naming the hundreds of thousands lakes in Finland will do it on a really early morning
I can’t speak from personal experience with perimenopause, but through my own training and recovery work I’ve spent a lot of time looking into sleep, cortisol regulation, fueling and supplement timing. The same few strategies come up again and again for athletes who struggle with 3 a.m. wake-ups, overheating or brain fog.
Here are the essentials that seem to help the most:
Evening fueling for stable blood glucose
A small, slow-digesting carb + protein snack 60–90 minutes before bed often prevents the classic early-morning cortisol/glucose dip. Examples: a few spoonfuls of oats with whey, or yogurt + berries.
Magnesium Bisglycinate (early evening)
Very well tolerated and consistently helpful for deeper sleep and parasympathetic activation.
Ashwagandha + Glycine
Ashwagandha (Sensoril or KSM-66) can reduce stress levels and improve sleep quality. Glycine, an amino acid, taken at about 3 g in the evening, supports deeper sleep by lowering core body temperature and calming the nervous system.
Temperature and stimulation control
Cool bedroom, light duvet, and avoiding late high-intensity sessions help keep nighttime cortisol down. A warm shower 60–90 minutes before bed helps your body cool afterward.
Caffeine and iron status
A strict 10–12-hour caffeine cutoff can be surprisingly effective as sensitivity increases with age. Low ferritin is common and can worsen sleep fragmentation and restless legs, so checking and optimising iron status often makes a noticeable difference.
I’ve implemented all of the above in my own training and recovery routine, and I can genuinely say that my sleep structure and overall nighttime stability improved drastically once I focused on these simple fundamentals: stable evening fueling, magnesium, Sensoril/KSM-66, 3 g glycine, temperature control, and strict caffeine timing. Even without perimenopause experience, these elements have made a very clear difference in sleep quality and recovery.
That’s actually a great technique and not strange at all. What you’re doing is a classic CBT-I “cognitive distraction” strategy. These neutral, low-effort mental tasks (like naming fruits alphabetically or listing oceans) gently occupy just enough attention to stop the brain from drifting into problem-solving, planning or worry — the things that keep us awake at 3 a.m. It’s one of the simplest and most effective ways to break the spiral and ease back into sleep.
magnesium biglycenate and ashwaganda 90minr before bed.
Socks to bed (yeah, super sexy I know) . Bedroom temp down.
I’m getting blood work done next week, so I’ll get to ferritin / hemoglobin later.
But the biggest shift for me is menstrual cycle day 1. Once I’m back at the start of the cycle and low estrogen/progesterone levels, I feel like a reborn woman. HRV increases, RHR drops. Sleep like a champ again. Will keep doing the new setup and see if next round of luteal phase is better at all.
I feel like I want to move back to the deep freeze of North Finland and sleep in a tent outside.
on a really early morning 