According to new research loads of women are waking up unexpectedly in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep.
This is according to Dunelm, who make their living selling all sorts of things you can sleep on so you’d hope they know what they’re talking about.
Their research says that one of the most common things keeping women up at night is insomnia brought on by the menopause, and that there are about 13 million people in the UK who are menopausal or perimenopausal.
The average age of the menopause is 51, but it typically arrives between the ages of 45 and 55 and comes in three stages, perimenopause, menopause and post menopause.
Around five percent of women go through ‘early menopause’ where it occurs between the ages of 40 and 45, while one percent go through ‘premature ovarian insufficiency’ where the menopause arrives before the big four zero.
Of the millions of women who are menopausal or perimenopausal a big chunk will have suffered from some kind of insomnia.
As for what this all has to do with 3:29am, according to Dunelm’s research that’s the most common time to be kept awake by insomnia.
“Should be asleep, can’t sleep. This is awful” (Getty Stock Image)
Dr Clare Spencer said that a woman going through the menopause would experience all sorts of symptoms, including lack of sleep which then has an impact on so many things including mood and physical health.
Whether suffering from insomnia or not, many of us will have had those nights where we wake up for reasons we can’t explain and just end up not being able to get back to sleep.
For the women in the study who were kept awake in the middle of the night the attempts to tackle the lack of sleep were varied, with 53 percent preferring to just toss and turn until they eventually went back to sleep.
Other popular responses included reading a book for it bit or picking up the phone for an early-morning scroll on social media, with around 30 percent of women trying these options, while 20 percent would go and watch TV for a bit and 17 percent would stare at the unforgiving clock.
The doctor warned that a lack of sleep could bring about a ‘vicious cycle’ where your brain is sapped of energy, focuses on the negative and that tanks your mood.
According to the study a sizeable chunk of the millions of women going through the menopause will have suffered from insomnia (Getty Stock Photo)
She recommended avoiding stimulants such as alcohol, caffeine or nicotine before bed, and to avoid heavy meals right before going to bed.
Also part of the study was two-time Olympic gold medal winning athlete Dame Kelly Homes, who said that waking up at three in the morning ‘became a regular occurrence for me’.
She said she’d suffered from perimenopausal insomnia and it made her ‘so exhausted every day’.
As for her solution, Dame Kelly admitted she still only got about five to six hours of sleep a night but went to bed later to avoid waking up in the middle of her sleeping time.
She added that she used scented sleep sprays and described getting blackout curtains for the bedroom as ‘a must’.
