The Ageless and Awesome Podcast

If Your Brain Throws A Rave At 2 A.M., Here’s How To Shut It Down

• Susie Garden • Episode 310

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Ever bolt awake between 2-3 am with your mind racing and your heart doing drum solos? There’s a reason it happens at the same time, and no, you didn’t forget how to sleep. We dive into the real mechanics behind this annoying wake-up call so many women face in perimenopause and post-menopause: oestrogen swings that destabilise blood sugar, the steady drop in progesterone that removes a calming brake, a jumpier cortisol response, and a liver that’s busiest just as adrenaline naturally peaks.

I share how these pieces create a predictable pattern—an overnight glucose dip that your brain flags as a threat, triggering adrenaline to rescue blood sugar and snapping you awake. From there, we get practical. You’ll learn why daytime stability equals nighttime stability, how to set protein targets that match this life stage, and why three regular meals often beat intermittent fasting for women over 40. We talk slow carbs at dinner to drip-feed energy overnight, caffeine cut-offs to protect your rhythm, and smart swaps for alcohol so party season doesn’t wreck your sleep.

We also map out simple, science-backed ways to calm your nervous system: evening screen boundaries, breath work you can actually stick to, magnesium glycinate, journaling, and mini moments of mindfulness that nudge your body back into safety. Finally, we flag the subtle signs of insulin resistance and why addressing it is central to steady hormones and deep, unbroken sleep. If you’re tired of feeling wired, there’s a clear route back to calm: balance blood sugar, guide cortisol, support the liver, and personalise your nutrition.

Ready to sleep through and wake clear? Hit follow, share this with a friend who’s up at 2 a.m., and leave a quick review so more women can find these tools. Want tailored help? Book a free peri weight loss assessment via the link in the show notes and get your plan in place before January lands.

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SPEAKER_00:

Hi, I'm Susie Garden and this is the Ageless and Autumn Podcast. I'm an age-defying naturopath and clinical nutritionist and I'm here to bust myths around women's health and ageing so that you can be ageless and awesome in your 40s, 50s, and beyond. The Ageless and Awesome Podcast is dedicated to helping women through perimenopause and menopause with great health, a positive mindset, and outrageous confidence. Hit subscribe or follow now and let's get started. Hello, gorgeous one, and welcome back to another episode of the Ageless and Awesome Podcast. I'm your host, Susie Garden, perimenopause, naturopath, weight loss nutritionist, and fellow woman navigating this wonderfully chaotic phase of life with you. Maybe not always feeling wonderful. And today we're talking about something I know so many of you experience, and that's the dreaded 2 to 3 a.m. wake up. If you've listened to the podcast for a while, you know that I've had a massive struggle with sleep over the years. So I really wanted to record another episode about it. I was even speaking to one of my clients last week about this, and I thought, gosh, I've really got to put out another episode. So, you know, this dreaded 2 to 3 a.m. wake up, you know it. One minute you're deep asleep, the next you're wide awake. Sometimes your heart might be racing, sometimes your brain is just switched on like you've had a long black. Um, and often there's just no chance of drifting back off to sleep quickly. And you might be lying there thinking about the day you've had the day before, worrying about decisions you've made, worrying over decisions you need to make, worrying about what's going to happen the following day. And or sometimes it's just lying there thinking, why is this happening? You know, what's going on? Why can't I sleep? Why does it always happen at this exact time? Well, you know what? It's not you. It is your hormones and your stress chemistry doing a very predictable dance. And today I'm going to break down exactly what's happening inside your body between 2 and 3 a.m., why this is so incredibly common for women in perimenopause and often post-menopause as well, and what you can do starting tonight to reclaim your sleep. And at the end of this episode, I'll share how I support women in my programs to fix these sleep disruptions, to balance hormones, to get your energy back, and if it's your goal to hit your ideal weight as well. So stay with me because this is going to answer so many of your why is this happening to me? questions. All right, so let's start with the basics of why this happens. Almost every woman in peri-menopause will experience some version of sleep disruption. And one of the most common patterns is waking up in that kind of 2 to 3 a.m. Maybe a slight variation there, but that's kind of roughly the time period. And here's what most women aren't told. This isn't random. Okay. Your body is not malfunctioning, you didn't forget how to sleep. This wake up is part of a hormonal chain reaction that goes a little something like this. So, firstly, there's these cortisol changes that can happen in perimenopause. So, as the estrogen is fluctuating and eventually declines when you get into menopause, your cortisol becomes more sensitive. You produce more of it, you stay in a stress state for longer. Think of it like your stress thermostat has become faulty and so it fires too easily. And cortisol and estrogen share some pathways together. And when cortisol is elevated, your estrogen can swing up and down more rapidly or dramatically. And this is why you can feel perfectly normal one week and then overwhelmed and emotional the next. And that can happen day to day, hour to hour sometimes, or so it feels like. So cortisol dysregulation drives hormonal volatility. And also with the drop in progesterone, because remember in peri, estrogen is fluctuating, but progesterone tends to just drop and stay dropped, stay low. And progesterone is very beautifully calming to our brain. And that loss of progesterone really can uh destabilize our uh stress response. And so, again, this um cortisol and adrenaline can get released when prior to this hormonal kind of dysregulation we experience happened, it wasn't happening like that. We were way more able to manage it. Um, another factor that's involved is our blood sugar. Okay, oestrogen plays a big role in keeping blood sugar stable. And when oestrogen is low or is fluctuating, which is basically the definition of perimenopause, your blood sugar becomes far more likely to crash. And this, my friend, is the key to the 2 a.m. wake up. Your overnight blood sugar can just drop too low. So here's what happens: you go to sleep, your blood sugar falls as it should, because when we're sleeping, our blood sugar does get held at a slightly lower level because we're sleeping, we're not needing to use a lot of uh glucose. So in perimenopause, this blood sugar drop can actually drop too low, and your brain will perceive this as a threat, even though you're asleep. I've still got all these little monitoring systems going on in your body. So you start slipping into this low energy state, which the brain perceives as a threat. So your body does what it's designed to do, it's to keep you safe. It fires a surge of adrenaline to bring your blood sugar back up quickly. It's part of your stress response. And it's this adrenaline that can startle you awake. So you get the heart might be racing, it might not. Mind switched on, feeling wired but tired. And this is why, or one of the reasons why it's almost always at the same kind of time. This adrenaline rhythms peak between 2 and 4 a.m. And this is not anxiety, it's not your mind being restless, this is your blood sugar dropping caused by a cortisol estrogen imbalance. Okay, so once you understand that, it kind of makes sense. And if we look at, you know, why does this happen more in perimenopause? There are four big reasons that perimenopause sets the perfect stage for this pattern. One is estrogen becomes a roller coaster. So when estrogen drops, blood sugar becomes less stable, cortisol rises, and adrenaline surges and it becomes this loop. Number two, your stress response is heightened. So your nervous system is more reactive in perimenopause because we've lost that calming effect of the progesterone, and estrogen also has a calming role too in the brain. So your nervous system is more reactive, and a mild stressor now triggers a much bigger response. And this can be work stress, it can be emotional stress, it can be if you haven't been eating enough, it can be if you're over exercising, uh, alcohol intake, uh, even just your natural nighttime blood sugar shifts because your stress response is heightened, and we know we know this, um, then you can get this trigger of um adrenaline that wakes you up. And let's just address this under eating. Sometimes you're under-eating without realizing it because so many women over 40 unintentionally skip meals, eat light dinners, avoid carbs because they're trying to manage their weight, uh fast, um, try to be good inadverted commas with food, and sometimes it's having a bit of sugar before you go to bed as well. All of this can set you up for an overnight blood sugar crash. And you're not imagining it, you may have been able to get away with it for a while, uh, but you can't get away with it anymore when you hit peri. Your metabolism changes, your liver is changing, it's under a bit more load, your cortisol rhythm just change. So let's I'll just mention liver, let's talk about that. So there can be, you know, some changes in liver detox because your liver actually works hardest between 1 and 3 a.m. We know that a lot of those detox processes happen when you're asleep. And if it's overburdened, so if your alcohol intake is a little higher than it should be, like even at the moment, it's party season. A lot of people are drinking more than they should be, or they're having ultra-processed foods. Um, you know, if you're on medications, if you have poor sleep, if you're stressed, or it could be just your perimenopause biology, that all contributes to that wake-up because your liver is overburdened. And you know, so many women are saying, I used to sleep like a rock, now I'm awake every night. And your biology has shifted, your strategy needs to shift with it. So let's get practical now. Let's talk about how do we fix this. So here are the most effective strategies I use with my clients in the GLO protocol, the ones that consistently help women sleep through the night again. And I start to see improvements in sleep on this protocol. Honestly, on can be between within what a week sometimes. Um so one of the big game changes is to balance your blood sugar throughout the day. This is the biggest game changer, I reckon, actually. To prevent an overnight crash, you need stable blood sugar all night, sorry, all day long. And this means you're eating enough protein. And a simple guide to this can be, and again, everyone is different, and the the evidence and the research is changing with regard to this. It used to be certainly when I did my qualifications, was one gram, one gram of protein per kilo of body weight, and that was it. And I think for people that aren't trying to build muscle, for people that are, you know, not having anything particularly going on in their bodies, it's probably still stands. For people in perimenopause and postmenopause, the data is sort of saying between 1.2 and 1.6 grams of protein per kilo of body weight. I've even read up to two grams, starting to get up there, right? Um so eating enough protein is important. And in my program, I can through um using your blood biochemistry, using your weight, your way you distribute your weight, a whole bunch of things. I can work out how much protein is the right amount for you. Um, eating regular meals, okay, not skipping meals, not skipping out on lunch and just working through, not skipping breakfast. These meals are really important for managing blood sugar. And this is why I say to a lot of people, I have a lot of women that have tried intermittent fasting, and they're still coming to me because they're just they've hit a plateau in their weight loss or they're just not feeling great. And we know that women really need to be fed. A lot of the research on intermittent fasting has been done in men. It's not necessarily the right strategy for every woman, particularly in peri and post-menopause. Some people have great results with it, uh, but it's not for everybody. And I find women generally do way better eating three meals a day at regular times. Uh, they can do way better with that than with fasting from an energy point of view, from you know how they feel in their bodies from continuing the weight loss, if that's the goal. Um, another thing to prevent an overnight blood sugar crash is including slow carbs at dinner. So, you know, this you can do this with your veggies, you can have quality bread like rye bread is a really good one. There's just stuff that's going to slowly release energy so that you you're getting that energy during the night when you're sleeping. And also reducing your caffeine after midday. I mean, I think that's a fairly obvious one, but um, at least six hours before you plan to go to bed should be when you're avoiding caffeine like the plague. Um, because if your daytime blood sugar is unstable, an example of that is if you're getting that afternoon crash or afternoon slump in energy. If your daytime blood sugar is unstable, your nighttime blood sugar will be two. So if that's you, if you're getting an afternoon slump every day, reaching for a coffee at about three or a snack, um, and you're finding your sleep is also disrupted, it's uh highly likely it's a blood sugar-driven situation. All right, another tip is to um manage cortisol before bed. Big one. Can be super simple, it can be avoiding screens, so not opening your work email just before you're about to jump into bed. Um, I've got a fairly strict rule occasionally, I think I've been a bit soft on it lately. I need to reinstitute it, is from six o'clock onwards, no screen at all. Um, so managing cortisol before bed can be as simple as some breath work, and that's just deep breathing. Or if you have some breath work techniques that you like, I absolutely encourage that. It is good to have specific techniques, but even just simply deep breathing is going to be helpful. Having a really good quality magnesium, a magnesium glycinate in particular, can be really good for sleep. Um, having a warm shower can sometimes be helpful, or a nice relaxing bath if you have a bath, some stretching, maybe even like some gratitude practice. So that can be a journal, or you could just be saying it. Just saying three things that you're grateful for that's happened that day can be just really there's actually research that supports this for reducing cortisol. Um, sometimes having a relaxing herbal tea blend can be lovely, or or journaling, journaling out, any sort of stressors, any sort of issues that are going on for you, just getting them out of your head and onto a page and then shutting that book down, get it out of the way, that can be really helpful. So anything that's going to lower your stress response before bed will reduce that adrenaline surge at 2 a.m. This is actually pretty important. Next one is alcohol. Yes, limit alcohol to one to two nights a week if if at all. There are, you know, alcohol is one of the biggest triggers of the 2 to 3 a.m. wake up because it alters liver detoxification, it destabilizes blood sugar. Uh, there are so many fantastic alternatives to alcohol. I went to uh my gym Christmas party on the weekend and I took some uh non-alcoholic GTs and they were fantastic and I felt great, like I felt really good. I still felt like I was, you know, um enjoying myself and not just sipping water. Um, these are really, you know, low calorie, good options to have when you're in a situation where everyone around you is drinking. So and I felt it was so pleased with myself. It's the first time I've actually done that. Normally I would just drink water, but I've just discovered this new thing and I wanted to try them out. And I felt really good. Um, so yeah, limiting alcohol to one to two nights per week at the most. And I know it's hard, particularly in we're in party season right now. So really think about prioritizing which events am I going to drink at? Which events am I not gonna drink at? And honestly, these days there seems to be a much better acceptance of not drinking and respect for people that are saying, like, now I'm not I'm having an alcohol-free day today. You know, I think your your body and your mind will absolutely thank you, thank you for it. Um, also protein at breakfast. Starting the day with protein keeps your cortisol curve stable. And if you can keep that stable during the day, that will carry into the night. And so I, you know, I think a lot of people realize now that just having breakfast cereal or having toast is not enough at this stage of life, probably not at any stage of life, really. Um, stay away from the orange juice, stay away from the cereal and the low-fat dairy, starting the day with, you know, a protein sauce. That could be, you know, gosh, it could be anything. You could even, I've got clients that on their programs they're having like leftover roast chicken for breakfast with some veggies and toast, and that can be a really good option, or having some um rye toast with some mozzarella cheese and some, I don't know, tomato and baby spinach or something like that. Um, having a protein smoothie, having eggs, you know, starting the day with protein is key. It really sets you up for a good day, uh, or not a good day if you don't start with protein. Um, and working on nervous system regulation is another one. So not just at night, I already talked about at night, but working on nervous system regulation is huge in Perry. Even five minutes a day of deep breathing, of slow walking, of grounding, of just being mindful. Like if you're walking down some stairs, feel your feet on the stairs, feel the surface underneath the feet, feel your hand on the handrail, notice the muscles in your legs that are propelling you down. That kind of level of mindfulness doesn't take much, doesn't cost anything, and it helps to ground you and regulate your nervous system. There are so many things you could do to do this, and obviously, if you can do it for more than five minutes, it's great. Um, but even five minutes will help and can transform your sleep. And finally, fixing underlying insulin resistance. So, so many women don't realize they may have a degree of insulin resistance. Sometimes your blood tests can look normal, um, but often insulin's not really tested, to be honest. Um, some of the signs can be belly fat. Having a waste measurement of 100 centimeters or more guarantees you have a degree of insulin resistance. So that's one thing you can test easily at home. Um, if you have afternoon energy dips, if you have sugar cravings, if you feel shaky or sweaty when you're hungry, if you have poor sleep, all of those things can be signs of early insulin resistance. And honestly, once you're over 50, you're gonna have a degree of it, um, unless you're very good with managing your food intake and your body weight. And balancing insulin is key for hormone balance and deep sleep. Super, super important. So, how do we fix this? And how do I help women fix this? So, if you're listening to this and thinking, yes, this is me, this is exactly what's happening. You're not alone and you don't have to figure it out by yourself. This is exactly the kind of issue I help women solve inside my GLOW protocol. You know, women come to me saying, I haven't slept through the night in years. For some women, it's since they had kids. Uh, I feel wired but tired. I'm doing everything right, I'm still exhausted. Within weeks, as I mentioned before, not months, just weeks, their sleep starts to stabilize because when you balance blood sugar, when you regulate cortisol, when you personalize your nutrition and support your hormones, your body finally feels safe enough to stay asleep and you don't get those adrenaline spikes anymore. So inside the Globe Protocol, which is a one-to-one program, we create a structured personalized plan to fix this at the root cause. It is not about a temporary hack, it's about teaching your body how to feel safe again, metabolically, hormonally, and emotionally. So, you know, if you're ready to get support, and I mean real personalized support, so you can sleep deeply, you can wake with energy, you can lose weight sustainably and feel calm in your body again, then I would love to invite you to book in a free peri weight loss assessment. And I'll look at exactly what's going on with your hormones, your metabolism, your mood, your sleep, whatever it is that's going on for you, and I'll help you map out your next steps. The links in the show notes. I'm doing these all the way up until the Christmas break. If you're thinking, oh, I might start, you know, a New Year's resolution, start something in January, then you need to kind of plan it now so that you've got your plan ready to go for first of January or for early January. Um, so that's it for this week. Thank you so much for being here, for listening. I hope this episode helped you understand your body a little more and feel a little less alone. Your sleep is not broken, you are not broken. You're just in a new hormonal chapter, and you deserve support that meets you where you're at. If you loved this episode, please follow the podcast, leave a quick review, I'd love that, or share it with a friend who's been waking up at 2 a.m. every night. Uh, she'll thank you. So until next time, take care. I will see you next Tuesday for a brand new episode. Thanks so much for joining me on the Ageless and Awesome podcast. If you would like this episode, please make sure you click the little plus button if you're on Apple Podcasts, or the follow button if you're on Spotify, so that you get each new episode delivered to you every single week. If you feel like writing me a five-star review, you would absolutely make my day. If you found this episode resonated with you, head over to my Instagram and DM me at the Perry Menopause Park. I would love to connect with you.

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Susie Garden

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