Did you know that lack of sleep impacts your fat cells?
Sleep and its disorders are becoming increasingly important in our sleep deprived society which is why scientists are learning that our sleep quantity and quality is intricately connected to various hormonal and metabolic processes in the body. For women in menopause and post-menopause, sleep quality and quantity matters!
Sleep deprivation and sleep disorders may have profound metabolic and cardiovascular implications for women navigating through their menopause transition.
Not only does sleep deprivation increase the risk of heart disease as women move into post-menopause, but also increases inflammatory changes in fat cells, gut and liver health changes and the increased risk of Type 2 diabetes and fibromyalgia.
As a sleep deprived society, there is evidence showing that our overnight sleep, on average is only 6 hours a night. A century ago it was 9 hours.
“Prevalence of both diabetes and obesity has increased to acquire pandemic proportions. Though other factors such as diet and reduced physical activity have contributed to the obesity epidemic the impact of sleep dysregulation on causing metabolic derangements is being increasingly recognized. Considering only a small percentage of people can maintain a healthy weight over a long period on diet and exercise alone, the impact of sleep on weight has opened a new venue for potential intervention.” [Sharma & Kavuru, p. 2, 2010].
Why your sleep is important for restoring your metabolism overnight.
I know that we often hear about our metabolism but most women don’t understand that the metabolic functions of fat cells differ from other cells in the body. Although most cells store small amounts of fat, most of the body’s fat is stored in specialised cells called adipocytes.
Almost the entire fat cell is filled with one single droplet of fat and clusters of these adipocytes bind together to form adipose tissue, most of which is lying underneath the skin (cellulite) and also surrounding internal organs.
Your fat cells store fat in readiness for use as a source of energy, when food is scarce. These fat cells are also found in the liver.
Your metabolism is defined as the whole range of biochemical processes that occur within you, including in your fat cells. Because fat cells attract excess oestrogen, as they are replete with oestrogen receptors, as the fat cells expand, they also become hormonally active, both producing and storing a form of oestrogen, called oestrone.
While the ovaries are the main source of oestrogen in premenopausal women, who are still ovulating, adipose tissue becomes the primary source of circulating oestrogen after menopause. This occurs through a process called peripheral aromatization.
Peripheral aromatization is the term given to the conversion of androgens (like testosterone) into oestrogens within peripheral tissues, rather than in the ovaries.
In other words, your fat cells have a secret hormonal life and if you aren’t sleeping, this can impact the rate at which they become inflamed and contribute to your post-menopause weight gain.
When we sleep normally and deeply between 2-4am, our metabolism and brain temperature are lowered. This provides your body with an opportunity to deal with any damage done during the day, e.g. from exercise or from the unhealthy foods you might eat, or other stress that your body has been under (I include emotional stress in this too).
Every day our metabolism is under stress – from the foods we eat, to the exercise we do (or don’t do) and to the foods, chemicals and pollutants we expose our body to as well. That’s why, as we age, we must focus on strategies to turn this around.
From improving our sleep, to our liver health, the type of exercise we do and of course the nutrients we consume daily, if we are going to set ourselves up for our healthy ageing, then changing how we look after ourselves during our mid-life transition matters.
Declining oestrogen levels impact melatonin and cortisol production
During our transition from menopause to post-menopause, there is another ‘shift’ in the ageing of our endocrine system (the system that helps to maintain hormone regulation) which is why, even for women who have been on HRT for years, the declining oestrogen levels in post-menopause impact on melatonin production (this is your sleep hormone) and your cortisol production (this is one of your stress hormones).
That’s why, if you are in your post-menopause years, you may feel as if your symptoms are returning. These years in your late 50s and early 60s are often a ‘perfect storm’ for your changing health when you aren’t sleeping.
Our reproductive hormones continue to decline in the post-menopause years, and this is where they remain for the rest of our life. And because the reproductive hormones ‘talk’ to each other via the Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal-Ovarian Axis, then as oestrogen and progesterone levels decline with age, this has a further impact on melatonin and cortisol production.
When both melatonin levels and cortisol levels are out of balance, and you are awake during the night, your body doesn’t utilise the fat-burning potential that it should have overnight. When cortisol and blood pressure and insulin remain higher overnight, this can prevent the metabolism (or ‘burning’) of fats overnight as well.
Overnight fat burning is a natural physiological process driven by the body’s transition into a fasting state, where it shifts from utilizing dietary glucose to burning stored energy – specifically the fats stored in your adipose tissue.
When your stress hormones and insulin remain high overnight, this impacts your weight gain.
In my newsletters over the past decade, I’ve talked a lot about our chronic stress hormone cortisol.
This hormone is important to our sleep quality and quantity. Too much production of cortisol during the day and evening, causes cortisol levels to remain higher than they should. Paradoxically, so does lack of sleep.
High cortisol levels changes the use and uptake of glucose into your cells, including your brain cells. This is also why poor sleep contributes to your post-menopause ‘foggy’ brain.
If you have a persistent foggy brain when you wake up in the morning and you feel ‘hot’, and you aren’t sleeping, then I encourage you consider to join me and re-discover how to sleep all night again!
I still remember when I couldn’t sleep night after night. I was up and down like a yo-yo and it didn’t help that hubbie was lying there snoring blissfully unaware of my despair. The supplements didn’t help nor did the HRT.
Although I knew that not sleeping is the slippery slope to fibromyalgia and other auto-immune diseases, the one I was most concerned about, was the weight gain. This is because when we don’t get our deep, healing sleep, our hormones that help us to burn fat overnight become disrupted too. It’s the same for the thousands of women who join me on my programmes.
I still remember when I couldn’t sleep night after night. I was up and down like a yo-yo and it didn’t help that hubbie was sleeping, blissfully unaware of my despair. The supplements didn’t help nor did the HRT.
Although I knew that not sleeping is the slippery slope to fibromyalgia and other auto-immune diseases, the one I was most concerned about, was the weight gain. This is because when we don’t get our deep, healing sleep, our hormones that help us to burn fat overnight become disrupted too.
It’s been the same for the thousands of women who join me on my 12 week programmes. In these programmes, you learn step-by-step, what to do and why. Whether you are in menopause or post-menopause, I hope you can join me too.
You can read more about me by clicking on the link below.
Dr Wendy Sweet [PhD] MyMT Founder/ Member: Australasian & British Societies of Lifestyle Medicine.
References:
Haghayegh S, Strohmaier S, Hamaya R, Eliassen AH, Willett WC, Rimm EB, Schernhammer ES. Sleeping Difficulties, Sleep Duration, and Risk of Hypertension in Women. Hypertension. 2023 Nov;80(11):2407-2414. doi: 10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.123.21350.
Kuryłowicz A. Estrogens in Adipose Tissue Physiology and Obesity-Related Dysfunction. Biomedicines. 2023 Feb 24;11(3):690. doi: 10.3390/biomedicines11030690. PMID: 36979669;
Ness, K., Strayer, S., Nahmod, N. et al. (2019) Four nights of sleep restriction suppress the postprandial lipemic response and decrease satiety. Journal of Lipid Research, 2019; jlr.P094375 DOI: 10.1194/jlr.P094375
Papatriantafyllou E, Efthymiou D, Zoumbaneas E, Popescu CA, Vassilopoulou E. Sleep Deprivation: Effects on Weight Loss and Weight Loss Maintenance. Nutrients. 2022 Apr 8;14(8):1549. doi: 10.3390/nu14081549.
Sharma, S., & Kavuru, M. (2010). Sleep and metabolism: an overview. International journal of endocrinology, 2010, 270832. https://doi.org/10.1155/2010/270832
