Talk on "women & sleep"
Save The Date: Illums Bolighus, Amagertorv. Friday 30 October 2026, 16:00 to 17:30.
Join certified sleep counsellor Laura Kanadel for an afternoon talk on how women’s sleep changes across life, from the first period through pregnancy and perimenopause to the years after menopause.
Tickets will be released shortly on the Illums Bolighus website. Save the date, and keep an eye out.
Woman & Sleep: an afternoon with Laura Kanadel
We spend roughly a third of our lives asleep, yet most of us were never taught how sleep actually works, and almost none of us were told that a woman's sleep follows its own biology. Our hormones shift across the month, through pregnancy and the nights with a newborn, and again through perimenopause and menopause, and each of these chapters changes how we fall asleep, how deeply we sleep and how rested we feel in the morning.
On Friday 30 October, sleep counselor and MUUN co-founder Laura Kanadel invites us into a calm hour and a half about the female body at night. We will look at what the research tells us about each stage of life, why women report insomnia more often than men, and which small, evidence-based changes to the bedroom and the evening routine make a real difference.
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When: Friday 30 October 2026, 16:00 to 17:30
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Where: Illums Bolighus, Amagertorv 10, Copenhagen
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Language: to confirm (Danish or English)
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Tickets: to confirm (free with registration, or paid)
Talk outline
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Why women's sleep deserves its own conversation. The insomnia gap between women and men, and why research has long studied the male body as the default.
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Sleep basics in ten minutes. The body clock, sleep pressure, and the stages of a night's sleep.
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Sleep through a woman's life. Puberty, the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, the postpartum months, perimenopause, menopause and later life.
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What we can do tonight. Light, temperature, timing, the bedroom, and when to seek help.
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Questions from the room.
Female sleep through every stage of life: from first period to life after menopause
As women, we are often told that poor sleep is simply part of the deal, something that comes with stress, with children, with getting older, and so we learn to carry tiredness quietly rather than ask why it keeps returning. The research tells a different story. Women are about 1.4 times more likely than men to experience insomnia.
What is female sleep, and why does it need its own conversation?
Sleep is governed by two systems that every human shares, a body clock that runs on a roughly 24-hour rhythm and a sleep pressure that builds the longer we are awake. What is particular to women is that our reproductive hormones, oestrogen and progesterone, rise and fall across the month and across the decades, and they act on the very things that shape a night's sleep, including body temperature, breathing and mood.
For much of the history of sleep research, the male body was treated as the default, and hormonal variation was seen as noise to be controlled rather than a signal to be understood. That is changing, and the picture that emerges is of a sleep life with distinct chapters.
Puberty: where the sleep gap begins
Before the first period, girls and boys report insomnia at similar rates. In a study of 1,014 adolescents aged 13 to 16, that changed after periods beging for girls, when the onset of menstruation was associated with a 2.75-fold higher risk of insomnia in girls, while no comparable link was seen in boys.
The menstrual cycle: a monthly rhythm in our nights
After ovulation, progesterone rises and core body temperature rises with it, by roughly 0.3 to 0.7°C compared with the first half of the cycle. Because falling asleep depends on the body cooling down, a warmer, flatter temperature curve at night can make sleep feel lighter.
A review in Sleep Medicine Clinics describes how the luteal phase, the two weeks before a period, brings a blunted temperature rhythm, a little less REM sleep and more sleep spindles, and how poorer sleep in the premenstrual days is common in women with premenstrual symptoms or painful cramps (Baker and Lee, 2018).
Pregnancy: sleep for two
Pregnancy reshapes sleep from the first weeks. A meta-analysis of 24 studies and 11,002 women found that 45.7% of pregnant women reported poor sleep quality (Sedov et al., 2018), with estimates of about 54% in the first trimester, 49% in the second and close to 70% in the third.
Perimenopause: when sleep becomes unpredictable
Perimenopause, the years of hormonal fluctuation before the final period, often begins in our forties, and disrupted sleep is frequently one of its first signs. Data summarised from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN) put sleep disturbance at 16 to 42% before menopause to 39 to 47% in perimenopause and 35 to 60% after menopause.
Hot flashes and night sweats can wake us directly, and the falling and fluctuating levels of oestrogen and progesterone affects sleep quality in their own right. Even before periods stop, the premenstrual nights can carry less deep sleep than the days after a period.
Female sleep at a glance
| Life stage | What tends to change | What the evidence shows |
|---|---|---|
| Puberty | Body clock shifts later; insomnia risk rises in girls | 2.75-fold higher insomnia risk after periods |
| Menstrual cycle | Warmer nights, lighter sleep before a period | Core temperature 0.3 to 0.7°C higher after ovulation |
| Pregnancy | Discomfort, waking to urinate, restless legs | 45.7% report poor sleep; about 70% in the third trimester |
| Postpartum | Fragmented sleep, slow recovery | Not fully recovered six years after a first child |
| Perimenopause | Hot flashes, night waking | from 39% to 47% report sleep disturbance |
| After menopause | Higher risk of sleep apnoea | 2.6 to 3.5 times higher odds of sleep-disordered breathing (association) |
Alongside professional help, a few habits support the body's own rhythm at any age.
- Keep the bedroom cool. Falling asleep depends on a drop in core temperature, which matters most in the second half of the cycle and through perimenopause. Breathable bedding and layers we can remove during the night help us respond to a hot flash without fully waking.
- Anchor the morning. Daylight soon after waking and a consistent wake time, even at weekends, keep the body clock steady, which is especially useful for teenagers whose clocks drift late.
- Track the cycle. Noticing which nights tend to be harder lets us plan around them.
- Share the night. In the postpartum years, splitting night feeds or protecting one longer block of sleep each night is a practical step.
- Take snoring seriously. Loud snoring, gasping or morning headaches, particularly after menopause, are reasons to speak to a doctor.
Interesting Questions and answers
Why do women have more trouble sleeping than men? Women are about 1.4 times more likely than men to experience insomnia, and the gap appears around the first period. Shifts in oestrogen and progesterone across the cycle, pregnancy and menopause affect body temperature, breathing and mood, which all shape sleep.
Does the menstrual cycle affect sleep? Yes, many women sleep more lightly in the days before their period. After ovulation, progesterone raises core body temperature by about 0.3 to 0.7°C, and poorer premenstrual sleep is especially common in women with premenstrual symptoms or painful cramps.
Is it normal to sleep badly during pregnancy? Poor sleep is very common in pregnancy, affecting about 46% of pregnant women and close to 70% in the third trimester. Restless legs syndrome affects roughly one in five women late in pregnancy and usually improves after birth.
How long does it take for sleep to recover after having a baby? In a large German study, mothers' sleep satisfaction and duration had not fully returned to pre-pregnancy levels six years after a first child. The steepest drop came in the first three months after birth.
Why does perimenopause cause insomnia? Perimenopause brings fluctuating and falling oestrogen and progesterone, plus hot flashes and night sweats that can wake us. Between 39 and 47% of perimenopausal women report sleep disturbance.
Are women more likely to get sleep apnoea after menopause? Yes, the risk rises after menopause. In the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort, postmenopausal women had 2.6 to 3.5 times the odds of sleep-disordered breathing compared with premenopausal women, after adjusting for age and body size.
What is the best treatment for menopause insomnia? Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is a well-tested, drug-free treatment. In one randomised trial, 70% of menopausal women with insomnia and hot flashes reached a no-insomnia score after eight weeks of telephone CBT-I, compared with 24% in a control group.
