Managing one’s health is a tricky task and if done well can lead to a stress free and enjoyable life. Doctors suggest there are three critical aspects of our health people can manage on a daily basis: exercise, diet, and sleep.
Many people forget about sleep, because exercise and diet are discussed much more often when it comes to personal health. However, it hass been proven again and again that a good night’s sleep leads to a healthier lifestyle. A recent study added more findings to the topic when it discovered poor sleep habits may lead to menopause symptoms.
Study Details
The study was done in South Korea and led by a group of sleep researchers and doctors. In total, the study looked at data from 634 women. The women were aged between 44 and 56 and the researchers review their health indicators and sleep habits.
Findings from the Research
The researchers normalized the data to adjust for several key areas including age, income, physical activity, smoking status, and several others. After this, they found 19% of the women reported serious sleep problems. The real interesting part of this is nearly all of these women with sleep issues experienced higher rates of stress, depression, and menopause symptoms.
Obviously, sleep issues alone can have serious impacts, especially over a longer period of time. This is bad enough, but when sleep problems are paired with menopausal symptoms there can be even worse results. Some of the identified concerns were risky outcomes like obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and even a potential risk of cancer.
Tips to Reduce your Risk
Overcoming these issues can be done in several ways. Estrogen is actually a large factor in regulating sleep, which means a hormone therapy treatment might be helpful. When you’re focusing just on sleep problems, there are numerous tips for overcoming the common causes of sleep disorders.
Another helpful solution might be one that wouldn’t come to mind right away. A healthy sex life. There has been research and findings suggesting remaining sexually active whilst going through menopause can have lasting impacts on both your mood and your health. There are benefits like improvements in body image and mood that can seriously improve your health. More and more focus has been added to maintaining a healthy sex life. In fact, there are even full detailed reviews on which mattresses will be best for your sex life.
While a person’s sex life and menopause might not seem related, being in a good state of mind is one of the key recommendations doctors make to remain healthy, as is exemplified in this article where Elizabeth Poynor, MD, PHD discusses in details the benefits of a healthy sex life.
There are always going to be health concerns that crop up in life, but it is always surprising how many are related. Sleep and menopause are not ones that might be connected immediately, but it just goes to show that living a healthy life means an increased focus on nearly every aspect of your daily routine.
