Ever lie awake at night, unable to sleep, only to feel tired and cranky the next day? For a lot of women, it’s not just random – it falls into a pattern that is highly annoying: it happens around your period.

You may attribute it to a tough week or pressing demands, but sleep and your hormones have a unique bond that goes beyond merely clocking seven to nine hours of shut-eye each night.

It’s not just in your head. Your mood, energy levels and stress are some of the ways your sleep quality affects you. Knowing the relationship is a starting point to change the pattern and help ensure that you are supporting your body’s own natural rhythm for optimal energy and wellness.

The Two-Way Street: How Sleep and Hormones Influence Each Other

The relationship between sleep and hormones is reciprocal, making for what can feel like a vicious cycle.

Poor Sleep Worsens Hormonal Symptoms

When you don’t get high-quality sleep, your body gets primed to stress more easily, inflammation increases and your emotional resilience plummets. This directly impacts hormonal symptoms. A recent 2025 study published in Scientific Reports found that there’s an important relationship between poor sleep quality and the intensity of premenstrual syndrome (PMS).

It found that women with bad sleep had worsening PMS symptoms, specifically emotional and behavioural symptoms including:

Anger and irritability
Anxiety and tension
Low or sad mood
Increased sensitivity and crying
Excessive tiredness and lack of energy

This is to say that lack of restorative sleep does not simply tire you out, but it actually magnifies the very symptoms of hormonal imbalance that are hardest to manage.

Hormonal Fluctuations Disrupt Sleep

On the flip side, female fluctuating hormones through all stages of life are often responsible for terrible sleep.

During the Menstrual Cycle: Progesterone increases, then decreases just before you get your period in the second half of your cycle (known as the luteal phase). Progesterone is calming and has a sleep-promoting role. When the levels of it fall, you may have more difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep. This drop in hormones is one of the reasons why sleep disturbances are a common complaint for women with PMS.
During Perimenopause and Menopause: When levels of oestrogen start to fluctuate and then drop, this can cause night sweats accompanied by hot flushes that disrupt sleep by causing a multitude of wakes. The simultaneous decrease in progesterone also exacerbates sleep issues, so restful slumbers seem like a distant memory.

This interplay helps create a feedback loop: Hormonal changes ruin your sleep, and the resulting sleep loss makes your hormonal symptoms that much worse.

A Naturopathic Approach to Breaking the Cycle

A naturopathic approach views the need to redress this equation on both sides. Everything can work perfectly if we’re able to do two things: firstly, support the healthy function of our hormones and secondly, facilitate an environment conducive for deep, restorative sleep.

Prioritise Sleep as a Non-Negotiable

There are many things you can do, and building a calming bedtime routine is the starting point.

Stick to a Schedule: You should try to go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day (even on weekends) to help regulate your body’s internal clock, or circadian rhythm.
Create a Sleep Sanctuary: Darken, cool, and quiet your bedroom. Remove blue light from screens (phones, tablets, TVs) for at least one hour before bed – it actually blocks the production of melatonin, your natural sleep hormone.
Establish a Wind-Down Ritual: Instead of scrolling on your phone, read, take a warm bath with epsom salts, listen to calming music or journal as ways to signal the body that it is time to start winding down.

Use Food and Herbs as Medicine

What you eat affects your hormones and your sleep.

Balance Your Blood Sugar: Limit sugar and refined carbs – especially later in the day. Because of this, a blood sugar dip can wake you up when you are sleeping. Opt for meals that contain protein, healthy fat and fibre.
Incorporate Magnesium: This powerful mineral is needed to relax the nervous system and can be rapidly depleted by stress. You can get it in leafy greens, nuts and seeds, as well as dark chocolate, or work with a practitioner to source high-quality supplements.
Leverage Calming Herbs: Herbal teas such as chamomile, passionflower and lemon balm are excellent pre-bedtime relaxation aids. A naturopath also may suggest specific herbal tinctures to assist with deeper sleep and the balancing of hormones.

Manage Your Stress Response

As the stress hormone cortisol directly disrupts sleep, coping with stress is vital. Mild exercise such as yoga or walking, daily mindfulness or meditation, and deep breathing can help reduce cortisol levels and create a calm and relaxed state that helps with sleeping.

When you take a holistic approach that heals your hormonal system and helps regulate your sleep, you can say goodbye to the exhaustion and emotional rollercoaster.

If you’re lacking balance and ready to look under the hood of your sleep and hormone issues, make an inquiry or book an online consultation today.