Are you kidding me! Of course sleep problems are connected to heart disease in menopausal women. Problems sleeping are classic signs of adrenal production of stress (sympathetic) hormones. and nothing puts more “stress on the heart than stress hormones! That’s why one of the most important things you can do to protect yourself from heart disease or to mitigate the effects if you already have it, is to focus on adrenal health.
When the inevitable hits and a women’s ovarian hormone output slows down, a women’s adrenal glands, which also produce reproductive hormones (except at this point in a woman’s life they’re more accurately health and repair hormones) are expected to pick up the slack. They’re working hard! To give your adrenals some love, use Celtic Sea Salt or Redmond Salt or Himalayan salt. The adrenal gland LOVES minerals! Use lots of Vitamin C too and don’t forget the Zinc and Magnesium. Breath deeply and fully 5 minutes a day paying extra attention to the exhale, it’s activated by the relaxation nervous systems (parasympathetic) and mitigates some of the affects of the stress nervous system. Meditation and Yoga are great too. Us more protein to avoid low blood sugar and eat less food. And as always make sure you’re avoiding problem foods and using probiotics and easting lots of fermented foods.
Insomnia and other sleep disturbances are common among perimenopausal and postmenopausal women and may increase their risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Evidence that a combination of altered sleep duration and insomnia among women ages 50-79 doubled their risk of both CHD and CVD over a period of more than 10 years is presented in an article in Journal of Women’s Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available on the Journal of Women’s Health website.
In “Sleep Duration, Insomnia, and Coronary Heart Disease among Postmenopausal Women in the Women’s Health Initiative,” Megan Sands-Lincoln, PhD, MPH and a team of researchers from leading medical institutions across the U.S. gathered self-reported data on sleep duration and insomnia in 86,329 women 50-79 years of age. Shorter (10 hours) sleep duration and insomnia were associated with higher incidence of CHD and CVD over 10.3 years, and when considered together, the interaction risk of insomnia and sleep duration was significant.
“This is the first study to investigate interactions of sleep duration with insomnia in relation to increased risk of CHD and CVD in postmenopausal women,” says Susan G. Kornstein, MD, Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Women’s Health, Executive Director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Women’s Health, Richmond, VA, and President of the Academy of Women’s Health. [Read more: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.]
