Today's topic
Today on A.Vogel Talks Menopause, I'm answering the question, "Can easing your night sweats cause more dreams?"
This was a question I had the other week from a lady who had been using our Sage tablets and after about six weeks, she noticed that she was having a lot of very complex dreams at night, which is something she'd not had for a while. And she wondered why this had happened.
Why you might be dreaming more after easing your night sweats
It's very simple. If you are getting lots of night sweats, if your nights are being disrupted, if you're having to wake up and then try and get more comfortable and get back to sleep, this can interfere with the dreaming sequences whilst you're asleep.
And that, in turn, can affect your emotional state during the day because everything that you're doing is not getting processed properly at night whilst you sleep.
So if you sort the night sweats out, with remedies such as Sage, and your night sweats start to decrease so that you are starting to get a better night's sleep and a longer sleep, then your brain will take this time to catch up with all the processing that it's not been able to do for a while.
The problem with this is that it's like your computer, there's so much information. It's trying to back everything up as quickly as possible and what very often happens is that you start to dream. The dreams, very often, will be fast and furious. They may be very complex because your brain might be trying to process two or three different things all in one dream.
And that can tend to wake up and you end up remembering a lot of the dreams which you might not have done before. So, it's quite interesting.
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Other dream or sleep scenarios you can experience during menopause
There are other aspects of dreams, too. And I thought I'd go through these today, just a quick overview.
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Remembering dreams more
The other thing that can happen is that we tend to have a much shallower sleep once we are in the menopause because plenty of oestrogen gives us a deep prolonged sleep.
So as our oestrogen starts to fall, then very often, we're sleeping at a much shallower level, which means that we wake up a lot easier. We wake up a lot quicker. Noise will disturb us more. But because we're in a much shallower state, we're more able to remember our dreams.
And some women say to me, "You know, I start to dream, and then I've never dreamt before." It's not that they're starting to dream, it's just that because they're in such a shallow sleep, they are remembering a lot more detail of the dreams that they have had before.
Action-packed dreams
Another thing that can happen is that you can get more action-packed dreams. You know, those dreams when you wake up in the morning and you feel exhausted.
It almost feels like you've been in a film. Everything is so real. It may well be it's in colour. It's very action-packed. There's a lot of things going on all around you. And you feel so drawn into that, that very often, you can feel quite physically tired when you eventually wake up.
Nightmares and night terrors
For some women, it can be the nightmares and the night terrors. And unfortunately, at this moment in time with everything else that's going on, most of us are extra worried. We're extra anxious. We're extra fearful and because going through the menopause, falling oestrogen decreases our control over our emotions.
So we can feel our emotions much more deeply, much more internally, and sometimes, much more heartfelt. And because of that, our fears during the day very often transfer themselves to our sleep, to our dreams and that fearfulness, and that worry and anxiety can be magnified greatly.
This is what can cause nightmares and night terrors. And very often in these, you will wake up and your heart will be thumping, purely maybe out of panic or just out of sheer terror. So these are kind of not the nicest aspects of dreaming but they are very, very common especially if you are more anxious and worried.
Sleep paralysis
The other thing that can happen is this sleep paralysis. Now, in normal circumstances when you go to sleep, your body goes into a very light level of paralysis. If it didn't, then your nighttime would be so much more active. You would be acting out everything that you are dreaming about, and obviously, that's not very good for you.
It could put you in harm's way, especially, you know, for people who do things like sleepwalking. So your body puts you into a very gentle state of paralysis that helps you to relax and helps you to sleep, helps you to have the dreams without you hitting and lashing out. Again, because you're sleeping at a much shallower level, there are times when you can wake up and you become conscious quicker than the body can switch this mechanism up, so you can wake up and you find that you can't move.
It can be quite frightening. I mean, I've had that several times. And you want to call out or shout out and you literally can't do anything. In the usual circumstances, what happens is your body will very quickly catch up with this, so it tends not to last too long but just in that waking moment, it can give you quite a panicky feeling.
How to improve your sleep
There are lots of things you can do to help improve your sleep. I have done several blogs on this, going into a lot more detail. So if you want to find out a little bit more, then please just check the links below:
How to get a better nights sleep during menopause
Struggling to sleep? Tips & tricks to help
But just be reassured that extra dreams, action dreams, and, you know, just feeling things a little bit more when you're sleeping are really very, very common during the menopause, so you're certainly not alone with all these things going on.
I hope this was of interest to you. I think it's a fascinating subject.
Let me know if you have experienced any of these dream scenarios during menopause in the comment section below.
