Observably, adolescent and adult women experience cyclical changes in reproductive hormone levels. Interestingly, research suggests that permenopausal women’s endocrine systems may actually buffer them against stress, activate their immune systems, and improve their cardiovascular health. Because of changing women’s hormone levels, both monthly and throughout the life span, women have often been excluded from research sleep, circadian rhythms, and other decade, in the section below, I highlight the recent crucial findings regarding our menstrual cycles and sleep.

According to the National Sleep Foundation’s Women and Sleep Poll (1998), in which over one thousand women ages thirty to sixty were interviewed, the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and menopause can affect sleep. Specifically, 25 to 50 percent of the women surveyed reported that menstruation symptoms (bloating, tender breasts, headaches, and cramp/pain) disturb their sleep for approximately two to three days of their cycle.

Many of the women also reported other sleep difficulties during menstruation, including talking longer to fall asleep, walking at night and being unable to fall back to sleep, feeling less refreshed in the morning, having difficulty getting out of bed in the morning, and walking earlier. Nearly 70 percent of the women surveyed felt sleepiest the week prior to or during the first few days of their period. One woman explained:

Since the age of forty, my sleep has been much disrupted during my menstrual cycle. During menstruation, I feel so exhausted that I need to retire much earlier than usual, during midcycle each month, I need to go to bed at around eight o’clock when my children go to sleep.

Still, women’s sleep experiences vary greatly during the menstrual cycle. Some women may not have any changes in their sleep, whereas others experience premenstrual hypersomnia, a rare sleep disorder that causes excessive daytime somnolence in association with menstruation.

We can now begin to draw conclusion regarding sleep changes over the course of the menstrual cycle, from information gathered in studies conducted during the 1980s and 1990s (driver and Baker 1998). The sleep changed that you and other women may experience over the course of your menstrual cycle can linked to increasing and decreasing hormone levels.

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