INFLAMMATION & SLEEP

There’s nothing more frustrating than being bone tired all day, then wide awake at bedtime. Or waking up at 3 a.m. on fire, tossing and turning, brain spinning. Women in midlife often assume this is just “normal” menopause stuff, but it's not normal. And there’s more to the story. Inflammation plays a major role in wrecking your sleep, and in turn, poor sleep fuels more inflammation. It’s a vicious cycle that keeps your body stuck and your symptoms louder than ever.

Sleep is when your body’s cleanup crew goes to work. Hormones rebalance, blood sugar resets, your brain clears out toxins, your gut repairs itself, and inflammation gets dialed down. But when your body is inflamed, that restoration process gets disrupted. Your nervous system stays on high alert. Your cortisol doesn’t drop like it should. And instead of recovering overnight, your body just stays wired.

The problem gets worse in menopause. Estrogen and progesterone both support deep, restorative sleep. When those hormones decline, your sleep becomes lighter, shorter, and less refreshing. Add in high cortisol from chronic inflammation, and your body can’t enter the deeper stages of rest where healing happens. You wake up tired, foggy, craving sugar, and dragging yourself through the day, only to repeat the cycle.

Poor sleep also triggers more inflammation. Just one night of bad sleep increases levels of inflammatory markers in the body. Your blood sugar gets more erratic, your cravings spike, your stress response worsens, and your ability to regulate appetite and mood drops. That means more irritability, more bloating, more weight gain, and more hormonal chaos, all because you didn’t get enough rest.

And here's the kicker, most women try to fix this with more effort. More workouts, stricter food rules, or late-night scrolling to unwind. But all of those things make it worse. The harder you push in an inflamed, sleep-deprived state, the more your body pushes back. You can’t hustle your way to hormone balance. Especially not on 4 hours of broken sleep.

Inflammation also increases core body temperature, which is why you feel like you're roasting in the middle of the night. Hot flashes, night sweats, and those wide-awake-at-3 a.m. wakeups are often inflammation’s way of saying “I’m overwhelmed.” It’s not just about hormones, it’s about the internal fire that never gets put out.

So what do you do? You start by calming the system down. Remember our food plate? Using food to regulate blood sugar throughout the day also creates hormonal balance. Those rollercoaster highs and crashes are a huge contributor to poor sleep. If your blood sugar dips too low in the night, cortisol (your stress and fat storage hormone) gets released to bring it back up and that cortisol surge wakes you up. Starting the day with enough protein, healthy fat, and fiber, continuing throughout the day, and especially a balanced evening meal, helps keep that from happening.

You also need to build a real wind-down routine. Not just collapsing into bed after a busy day, but actually signal to your body that it’s time to wind down and that it's safe to shift gears. That might mean dimming lights and turning off screens 30 to 60 mins before bed, doing some gentle stretching, sipping something calming, or even just taking 10 minutes to breathe before sleep. It’s not indulgent. It’s necessary.

Inflammation makes the nervous system hypersensitive, so every little disruption, light, sound, blood sugar drops, temperature swings, feels more intense. Your job isn’t to eliminate all stress, it’s to build a stronger buffer. That starts with consistent rhythms. Going to bed and waking up at the same time every day, supporting your circadian clock with morning light, and fueling your body evenly instead of skipping meals and surviving on caffeine.

And let’s not forget the role of your gut. If inflammation is coming from digestive dysfunction, and in menopause it often is, your ability to produce melatonin and serotonin takes a hit. These are your sleep and mood hormones. Seventy percent of serotonin is made in the gut, and it’s the precursor to melatonin. So if your microbiome is inflamed or imbalanced, sleep suffers. It’s all connected.

The women I work with are always surprised when fixing their food, their blood sugar, and their stress patterns suddenly fixes their sleep. They expect sleep to be the last thing to improve, but it’s often the first. That’s because when you remove the inflammatory triggers and support your body instead of starving it, the nervous system finally feels safe enough to rest.

You weren’t meant to live in a state of chronic exhaustion. Midlife doesn’t have to mean constant fatigue, brain fog, and nights of bad sleep. Your body still knows how to rest, repair, and rebuild, it just needs the right environment. Wake up call... You can’t pour from an empty cup, and you can’t show up as your best self when your nights are spent battling your own biology.

Rest is not a luxury. It’s your reset button. And when inflammation is managed and your plates are up and spinning, sleep stops being a struggle and becomes a source of strength.

Watch my free video to learn how to reduce inflammation, balance your hormones, and finally start sleeping again—without supplements or sleep aids.