You used to be a good sleeper.
Even if maybe not perfect, sleep was a reliable nightly outcome. You’d get tired at a reasonable hour, fall asleep without too much trouble, wake up feeling like yourself.
And somewhere in your forties that just... stopped…. Now your energy is all over the place. You’re exhausted when you need to be alert and wired when you desperately need to rest. You crash at 4pm and can’t switch off at 10PM. Your body feels like it’s running on a completely different schedule to the one you actually need.
It is. And there’s a reason for it.
You have an internal clock, and right now it’s being disrupted
Every single cell in your body runs on a roughly 24-hour cycle called the circadian rhythm. This internal clock governs when you feel sleepy and alert, when your body temperature rises and falls, when cortisol peaks to wake you up, when melatonin rises to wind you down, when your digestion is most active, even when your immune system does its repair work.
It is not a metaphor. It is a real, measurable biological system, and it is exquisitely sensitive to hormones.
Here’s what most people don’t know: estrogen and progesterone are deeply involved in keeping your circadian clock running on time. Estrogen supports the sensitivity of your brain’s master clock, a tiny region called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, to light signals. Progesterone has a calming, sleep-promoting effect that helps anchor the rhythm at night.
As both hormones decline, that beautiful internal timing system starts to lose its precision. Your melatonin rises later than it should. Your cortisol spikes at the wrong time, often in the middle of the night. Your body temperature regulation becomes erratic. The whole rhythm shifts, and you feel it in every part of your day and night.
This is why perimenopause and menopause so often bring not just poor sleep, but a wholesale change in how your energy moves through the day. It’s not burnout. It’s not depression. It’s a disrupted clock.
Why light is the most powerful reset tool you have
Your circadian rhythm is set, and reset, primarily by light. Specifically, by the presence of bright light in the morning and the absence of light at night.
When light hits your eyes in the first hour after waking, it sends a direct signal to your brain’s master clock: it’s morning, start the day’s hormonal cascade. Cortisol rises appropriately. Melatonin production is suppressed. Your body knows where it is in the 24-hour cycle.
When you don’t get that morning light signal, because you wake before dawn, spend the morning indoors, or wear sunglasses the moment you step outside, your clock drifts. And a drifting clock means everything that depends on it drifts too: your energy, your hunger, your mood, your sleep.
This is why one of the most evidence-backed things you can do for your sleep and energy right now costs absolutely nothing.
Go outside within the first hour of waking. No sunglasses. Even on a cloudy day, outdoor light is many times brighter than indoor lighting and more than sufficient to set your clock. Even ten minutes makes a measurable difference.
At the other end of the day, dim your lights in the evening. Swap bright overhead lights for lamps. Reduce screen brightness. Signal to your brain that the day is ending, because right now your melatonin system needs all the help it can get.
The timing of everything matters more than you think
Here’s something that surprises most women when they first hear it: it’s not just sleep that’s governed by your circadian rhythm. It’s when you eat, when you exercise, even when you take certain supplements.
Eating late at night, particularly large meals within two hours of bed, disrupts your metabolic rhythm and raises your core body temperature at exactly the time it needs to be falling for sleep to deepen.
Exercising too late in the evening raises cortisol and body temperature and can delay sleep onset, particularly for women whose stress response is already dysregulated.
Even exposure to cold and warmth follows a circadian pattern, a warm bath or shower an hour before bed actually helps you sleep by raising your skin temperature and then allowing it to drop, mimicking the natural temperature fall your body needs to move into deep sleep.
Your body is not random. It is rhythmic. And working with that rhythm rather than against it is one of the most powerful things you can do for how you feel, not just at night, but across the whole day.
Start tomorrow morning
Tomorrow, before you do anything else, before the coffee, before the phone, step outside. Stand in the daylight for ten minutes. You don’t need to do anything. Just be in the light.
Do it every morning for a week and pay attention to whether your evenings start to feel different. Whether tiredness comes a little more naturally. Whether the 3am wake-up shifts even slightly.
This is free. It requires nothing. And the science behind it is some of the most solid in sleep research.
You deserve to feel rested. Not eventually — now. And understanding what’s actually happening in your body is the first step to getting there.
If you want to go deeper, the exact timing protocols for eating, movement, and light exposure, the specific supplements that support melatonin and cortisol balance during perimenopause, and how to rebuild your circadian rhythm step by step , that’s all inside the paid membership. Along with a quiz from last week to help you identify exactly what’s driving your sleep disruption.
For €9/month you get all of this, plus a monthly worksheet, a video from me, and a live Q&A where you can bring your actual questions. I’d love to have you in there.
Feeling like you need more personalised support?
I offer 1:1 sessions where we dig into your specific symptoms, history, and what your body actually needs.
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