Lights Out: How Sleep Changes After 40

Abbie: So, Alex — tell me, what's your worst sleep-training collision?

Alex: Um, I don't know.

Abbie: Well, what about that time we'd booked for a race and you forgot to set the alarm? The historic McKinney Half — the first time it ran.

Alex: Wait, that wasn't that long ago, was it?

Abbie: It was this past March.

Alex: "This past March"? You mean it was in March — I don't know what "just gone March" means.

Abbie: The March that just went.

Alex: Okay — yes, I remember that now. And you're right, I did forget to set the alarm. I'd forgotten — but you didn't set one either.

Abbie: Because you religiously set alarms, so I trusted you — and then we both overslept.

Alex: So the moral of the story is, when there's a race, both people should set alarms.

Abbie: Yes.

Alex: What's your worst sleep-training collision story?

Abbie: I mean, I generally sleep really badly before races anyway, especially if I'm staying in a hotel. But I've learned it doesn't really impact my race that much, as long as I've slept well the week before.

Alex: Yeah, that's right. I've actually been sleeping pretty well before races lately, oddly enough. I don't know why — maybe we've just done so many of them, it's become old hat.

Abbie: I think it's fine if you're at home. I just sleep really badly in a hotel, period.

Alex: That makes sense. There you go. By the way — guess what? We've got new music for the podcast. Shout-out to Federico on Fiverr for making us some custom theme music for Practically Fit. Check it out.

Abbie: Welcome to Practically Fit, Real Fitness Over 40. I'm Abbie.

Alex: And I'm Alex.

Abbie: And today we're talking about sleep. I love my bed — but this is not an ode to my beautiful mattress, although I do love my mattress. It's really a look at why sleep matters for fitness and health, and what, if anything, changes as you age. We're obsessed over pace, heart rate, and training plans — especially us runners — but the recovery variable most of us ignore is sleep.

Alex: Yeah, that's right, Abbie. So today we're going to talk about the land of Nod — what the science says about it, what we've experienced, and how we should practically think about sleep as part of our fitness routine.

Abbie: But first, it's time for Alex's favorite segment — the Warm-Up.

The Warm-Up

Alex: Yeah, check it out — new bumpers! You like those new bumpers, with our new theme music? Pretty cool, huh?

Abbie: Pretty cool.

Alex: Should I rap again to start the Warm-Up?

Abbie: Please don't. I had 75 complaints about it last time.

Alex: Okay, that's fine, we'll dive right in. We've got a couple of articles today. The first is from USA Today, focused on nutrition. The headline: "Low-Fat Dairy May Not Be as Beneficial After All, a New Study Finds." Quote: "All those years of reaching for the skim and fat-free options in the milk and cheese aisle may not have been the heart-healthy move we once thought, according to a new study." Abbie, do you — I hate skim milk.

Abbie: It just tastes like water, there's no point. I do drink 2%, which I genuinely like.

Alex: Well, I was thinking about the yogurt too — don't you eat low-fat, or zero-fat, yogurt?

Abbie: I do, but it's high-protein.

Alex: Fage or Chobani?

Abbie: Fage.

Alex: Fage.

Abbie: Fage is my favorite. I'd do Chobani too.

Alex: Well, in this study they looked at low-fat dairy — they assigned 74 overweight people to one of three diets. This was kind of confusing when we read it, the way they'd constructed the study, but all three diets did contain dairy: one was low-calorie and low-dairy, one was energy-neutral — eating as many calories as needed to stay weight-neutral — and one was unrestricted, with three servings of full-fat dairy a day. After the study, there was no difference in weight gain or body composition across the three groups, over a 12-week span. In fact, the article says, quote, "The groups that consumed more dairy saw improvements in blood pressure, and had higher intake of calcium, protein, and vitamin D." So — more dairy, better blood pressure. I guess I should just be eating lots of full-fat dairy, except —

Abbie: No, you're lactose intolerant, so that's a bad idea.

Alex: Right. But this is really fascinating. The lead researcher, Dr. Harvey Anderson from the University of Toronto, said, quote, "Those who had three servings of dairy didn't have adverse levels of blood cholesterol or lipids, or evidence of insulin resistance." There's been other recent research too, in addition to this study, showing that full-fat milk, cheese, and yogurt may not be as bad for your heart as previously thought — which I find exciting, because I love cheese.

Abbie: Yeah, I love cheese too. Interesting — although 74 doesn't feel like a very big study group.

Alex: Yeah, but as long as it's done scientifically, with the proper controls, it's promising.

Abbie: Yeah, no, I think it's interesting. I feel like we go in these cycles — fat is bad for you, butter is bad for you, then margarine gets introduced, then margarine is bad for you. It's interesting, all these cycles we go through with nutrition.

Alex: Yeah, based on whatever the latest study says. The one that really got me before was eggs — you used to hear, don't eat the yolk, just eat the whites, the yolk was bad for you. But now they're saying you can eat the yolk, it's good for you, good for your "good cholesterol." So, like you say, I find these studies really confusing, because every few years something we thought was bad for us turns out to be good for us. So there you go — full-fat dairy may not be as bad for your heart as previously thought.

Abbie: I'm glad, because I had a full-fat latte earlier today.

Alex: There you go. Next article, also from USA Today, goes back to a theme we touched on last week — I wanted to bring it back because it was so much fun. We'd mentioned something about analog backpacks, and this article dove into it. The headline: "Gen Z Is Having an Analog Summer, and They're Obsessed With This Item" — the analog bag. Do you know what an analog bag is? I know we talked about it a bit.

Abbie: Yeah, we talked about it last week — it's like a backpack or tote bag that you fill with non-electronic items. Things like, like you said last week, Alex — knitting, or maybe coloring books, or journals.

Alex: Paperback books, watercolor palettes — and this trend is taking over TikTok and Instagram. According to the article, content creator Sierra Campbell coined the term in a TikTok last year, about tips to lower screen time, and it's been spreading on social media ever since. So I have to ask — let me read this other quote: "Even though the point of the trend is to get offline, 'what's in my analog bag' videos, with bouncy animated text, soft typing sound effects, and curated sticker overlays, have racked up tens of thousands of views." The whole concept seems a bit paradoxical — you're really excited about your analog backpack, and you're posting about it.

Abbie: The message to people is, if you don't put it on TikTok, babe, it doesn't even exist.

Alex: It doesn't exist if it's not on TikTok or Instagram — so, racking up the likes on your analog backpack videos.

Abbie: Also — how much guidance do I really need to figure out what to put in an analog bag?

Alex: Well, there's all kinds of different ideas.

Abbie: I know, but I don't need to watch 15 different TikTok videos on it — can't I just come up with that myself? It's like those "what I eat in a day" videos — there are so many of those.

Alex: Or "my morning routine." In addition to the items we mentioned, the bags can also contain puzzles, physical calendars, and other, quote, "whimsical items."

Abbie: What are the whimsical items, babe?

Alex: I think that part has to do with decorating — I'd guess the whimsical items are things like squishy toys, or stickers. Could be anything.

Abbie: Scratch-and-sniff stickers.

Alex: And apparently, to be really on-trend, you need the L.L.Bean Boat and Tote — that's emerged as the bag of choice.

Abbie: That's the same as the whole Trader Joe's bag thing — the Trader Joe's canvas tote went viral across Europe too.

Alex: We used to order stuff from L.L.Bean when I was a kid, and I can tell you, it was not viewed as popular. I would not have wanted to be seen wearing L.L.Bean in high school.

Abbie: I've got a really nice L.L.Bean hoodie.

Alex: I'm just saying, it's interesting to me that L.L.Bean is trending now — kind of similar to how Carhartt's been embraced by younger folks. So the Boat and Tote is really popular, and people are embroidering it with everything from their initials to phrases like "self-care" — because when you're wearing your analog bag, apparently you need to advertise that it's for your self-care. The world needs to know. You can't just have the bag — the bag has to make a statement.

Abbie: I get it — we were all young once.

Alex: The company says sales are up more than 50% this year on that bag, and the best-selling month occurred this spring. They've even launched a limited-edition version monogrammed with "analog" and "off the grid."

Abbie: That's smart, by L.L.Bean — get in on it now.

Alex: You're not going to be this popular for long. The other interesting thing from the article — sales of Walkmans are up. Remember, we talked about this last week — they're up 110%.

Abbie: Wow. Yeah, one of the kids asked me if I had a Discman, and I said, "Oh, I'm older than that — I actually had a Walkman."

Alex: Yeah.

Abbie: That was the cassette one.

Alex: You know, when I moved in with you, I had so many DVDs and CDs —

Abbie: Oh yeah — I actually don't think I shipped my CDs over to the US. We had a shipping container, and we could only fit so much in, so I think I got rid of my CDs at that point. I was kind of gutted, because I had so many — it would be cool to look back through them now.

Alex: Yeah, well, I got rid of mine too — I wish I hadn't, since apparently they're popular again now.

Abbie: Well — you did buy a DVD player, and now we have two DVDs.

Alex: Yeah, that's because I wanted to show you this one show, and it wasn't available anywhere else. I thought it'd be a good investment. Maybe we'll just go fully analog — no more streaming.

Abbie: That's not really analog, though — it's still electric, it's still a TV.

Alex: But it's an analog format.

Abbie: Yeah, yeah.

Alex: Well, that's the new trend — and that's it for today's Warm-Up.

Sleep and Aging

Alex: So, let's transition now to our main subject today, which is sleep. We'll cover some different aspects and dimensions of sleep, including the science behind it, especially as we age. An important thing to start with is that deep sleep and REM sleep naturally decline with age — sleep gets lighter and more fragmented, even in healthy adults, which is probably why we have more trouble sleeping now, as we're into our 40s and 50s.

Abbie: Yeah, that makes sense.

Alex: I hadn't really thought about REM sleep before — but I guess, are we dreaming less? Have you noticed that?

Abbie: I think that's really hard to know about yourself, right? Some people remember their dreams, some people don't. But I definitely resonate with sleep getting lighter, and it being harder to get back to sleep than when I was younger. If I wake up, I wake up more often, and it's harder to fall back asleep.

Alex: I'm a light sleeper, and I try to eliminate anything that stops me from sleeping, or fragments my sleep. But if I have vivid dreams, or even wake up from a dream — like I did this morning — that's usually a sign to me that I've slept pretty well. We've talked about sleep scores before — my score was over 80 today, and I had really vivid dreams last night. I thought that was an interesting connection. But this also matters for athletes, because sleep is when your body repairs and recovers itself. Deep sleep is when growth hormone is released for tissue repair, and that phase becomes especially important for older athletes, since growth hormone naturally declines with age. That's a really important thing to know if you're someone who does a lot of fitness activity on a daily basis. It's also worth knowing that fragmented sleep can really impact you — in some cases, fragmented sleep, even over a longer stretch, can be worse than short sleep, because you can log eight hours and still wake up feeling undercooked if you woke up repeatedly through the night.

Abbie: Yeah, I've definitely seen the opposite too — where my sleep's been shorter, but I felt like I slept really hard, and that feels better than getting eight or nine hours of interrupted sleep, like you said.

Alex: How do you think your sleep now compares to when you were in your 20s and 30s?

Abbie: Oh my god. In my 20s especially, I could fall asleep really easily. Actually, one time at university, I fell asleep at a party right next to the speaker.

Alex: Oh wow — I've never been able to sleep like that.

Abbie: I was just super tired — I'd been working on a theater production, doing loads of hours, and I was exhausted at this party, and fell asleep next to the speaker. It was pretty huge, too. But yeah — now, like I said, I can normally get off to sleep pretty well. The only times I've really struggled are when I've had stress, or — when I was pregnant the second time, I really struggled to sleep. But now I have to have the room at a good temperature, no light, no noise — and then I fall asleep, and inevitably wake up in the middle of the night needing to pee.

Alex: Right, yeah — that happens to me a lot too. For men, that's something you have to watch, since how often you're getting up in the night can relate to prostate health, that kind of thing. I generally just don't like light coming in — one of the most annoying things for me is, we're upstairs, the kids are upstairs, and if they come down after we've gone to sleep for a snack or something, they turn on the hallway light, and it's just beaming under the door.

Abbie: It's not even that bright.

Alex: It's bright to me! It impacts me. I could stuff a towel under the door and be happy. I don't like light from TVs or alarm clocks or anything — I like it dark. That's really important to me.

Abbie: Yeah, we'll touch on that more later — I've got some fun stories to share.

Alex: The other thing I wanted to ask — when you were younger, were you able to sleep on an airplane? I honestly can't remember, since you said you fell asleep next to a speaker.

Abbie: We didn't really travel by plane much when I was younger — we mostly did car trips for holidays, so I didn't really fly until I was maybe in my teens.

Alex: Okay, but I mean in your 20s and 30s — since we're talking about how it's changed since then.

Abbie: I think airplanes are a bit different for me, because I suffer a bit with travel sickness, so that's kind of a different dimension for me.

Alex: Yeah — I've never been able to sleep on a plane. That's a goal of mine in life, honestly, to sleep on a plane.

Sleep As a Hidden Performance Metric

Abbie: Let's move on to a second topic — sleep as a hidden dimension. I thought this was really interesting, Alex, because sleep can be one of the last things we look at. We track all kinds of data — our pace, heart rate, steps, weekly intensity minutes, all kinds of things — but for a lot of people, sleep is a variable they just don't track or pay attention to, even though it's such a big part of your performance. So I wanted to ask about sleep trackers, and your take, Alex — do you think they're useful, or is there a dark side, where they backfire?

Alex: I think it depends on your personality, and how obsessed you get with data. For me, introducing a new data point can create anxiety — same with HRV. I got a watch that tracks HRV a few months back, and immediately I was like, "Oh my gosh, my HRV is so low." Then I did more research, and realized, yes, mine might be lower, but it varies a lot from person to person — it's a very individual measure. I talked to several people with low HRVs who are in great shape. So introducing a new data point into your monitoring can be stressful, especially if you're someone with health-related anxiety. When I first started wearing my watch all the time, it was a little stressful. But now I've really come to appreciate the sleep data — I think it's useful for telling you when you might need to take a break, or for spotting trends if they're getting worse — like, "okay, I probably need to lie low this weekend and catch up." I've found the data really useful, and it doesn't induce anxiety in me these days.

Abbie: Yeah, I agree, I think it's really useful. I think it can also help with some of the more complex stuff, like heart rate variability — I've found that if I don't sleep well, my HRV gets worse, so there's definitely a relationship there. One thing I don't find anxiety-inducing, just interesting, is that sometimes I wake up thinking I've had a great night's sleep, and my score is lower than expected — and vice versa, sometimes I feel like I slept horribly, and my watch says 85.

Alex: Yeah, I don't think it's a hundred percent reliable, and there are probably times the data's just inaccurate. We've had times recently where I felt like I'd slept amazingly, and it came back as 75. And to your point — the other night you were up half the night, and got an 85. I think it's just harder to tell for you, since you have such a low heart rate — even lying there awake, it might read like you're sleeping.

Abbie: I don't know — maybe it's just that I wasn't moving around much. I guess that's also a fair point — you're still resting, even if you're not fully asleep. I remember when I had that period of struggling to sleep, my health practitioner — this was when I was pregnant — told me, "Rest is important, don't get anxious about not being able to sleep, just lie in bed and rest, or change your environment and go back to sleep." So I think it's interesting that the watch is still capturing that rest piece, in a way. But what about our competitive sleep-score comparison?

Alex: I think we mentioned this at the end of last week's episode, when we were previewing this topic — almost every day, one of the first things we text each other when I get to work is, "What was your sleep score?" And I almost never beat you on sleep score.

Abbie: You did today.

Alex: Which I did today — surprisingly.

Abbie: So, what's surprising about that?

Alex: I felt tired all day, honestly — so it's like I slept too well.

Abbie: Interesting. I think I probably struggled last night because I did a run yesterday morning that really wiped me out, and I napped in the afternoon, which I never do — I'm not a napper. So I wonder if that had something to do with it. But yeah, we like to compare sleep scores — have you ever gotten a hundred?

Alex: No, never.

Abbie: One of my friends I work with regularly gets into the 90s, up to a hundred, and I was like, "How?" I very occasionally break 90, but it's pretty rare.

Alex: You know the only time I've ever gotten over 90?

Abbie: When?

Alex: It was when we went to visit your family. You know the typical flight from Dallas to London — about eight and a half hours on the way there. You land early in the morning, have to get through immigration, get your bags, which can take a while at Heathrow, then take a bus over to the car rental place, get a car, and drive out of Heathrow — which, for anyone who hasn't been, isn't in the middle of London, it's on the edge, and there's a lot of traffic. So you're driving out of there on the wrong side of the road, if it's me driving — sometimes it's Abbie, sometimes it's me. Point being, then we drive, what, a hundred miles, a couple hours, to your mom's house. By that point you've been traveling a long time and you're exhausted. You always tell me, "We need to stay up, get on the time zone" — that never really works. But there was one time we went, and I just crashed — I don't think I woke up till 11 a.m. the next morning. I didn't even wake up in the night to pee. That was the only time I've ever gotten above a 90.

Abbie: Well, the real point of having those trackers, especially as an athlete, or someone into fitness, is so you can start treating sleep as a training input — the same way you'd treat your workouts, or fuel, or your shoes, or anything else you're putting into training. I think it's really interesting to think about it that way. And like you said earlier, Alex, we've started to recognize when the sleep data is telling us something — like, maybe we're overtraining, or maybe today's not the best day for the workout I had planned. So I thought it was interesting to think of sleep not as an afterthought, but as an element you actively bring in and think about as part of performance — especially that feedback loop between exercise and sleep.

Timing Your Workouts

Abbie: One of the things we were talking about the other day was the timing of your workout, and the impact that can have on sleep. When we started the run streak recently, we pretty consistently did our workouts in the morning, right, Alex — mostly because it's hot here, and getting up first thing beats an evening workout. I naturally prefer working out in the evening — it feels nicer to my body, since it's already warmed up through the day, and I'm not working out all the kinks first thing. But over the summer, comparing our early-morning runs to our evening runs, we started to notice — without really meaning to — the impact it has on sleep if we run at, say, 7 or 8 p.m.

Alex: Yeah, especially when it's hot, or when we've done really hard interval sessions on the track. We'd get home around 8:30, right after dark, and at that point you're only up for a couple more hours. If I've done something really intense — like 400-meter repeats on the track, or even harder — my heart rate recovers pretty quickly, but it takes a while to get back down to a normal resting rate. It might still be 10, 20, even 30 beats elevated that evening, compared to where it normally sits, especially since my resting heart rate's pretty low to begin with. So yeah, those types of workouts definitely affect you, and you can see it in the sleep and heart rate data.

Abbie: Yeah, definitely. And then the other thing, like I said earlier — if you have a really terrible night's sleep and push through a hard session anyway, because the plan says so. I've done that a couple of times and lived to regret it — I wasn't rested enough to push through that workout sensibly. I think it's about really knowing when you're in that space, versus when you're just feeling a bit sluggish, and a workout will actually help you wake up and feel good. It was interesting — I found a study that supported some of this, a large 2025 Monash University study.

Alex: Wait, is that a real university? "Monash" doesn't sound real.

Abbie: It's real — I found this study, it had four million nights of data, and found that exercising within four hours of bedtime was linked to falling asleep later, worse and shorter sleep, and a higher resting heart rate with lower heart rate variability — some of the things we were just talking about. And the more strenuous the workout, the bigger the disruption — a bit to your earlier point, Alex. It was a pretty large, fairly recent sample, and it definitely lines up with our evening-runner history. Interestingly, the same research team found that exercise ending more than four hours before sleep onset showed no association with sleep disruption. So it's not that you can never run in the late afternoon or evening — it's the buffer before bed that matters, which I thought was really interesting.

Alex: Yeah, and I've noticed it this summer too, since we did the run streak mostly in the mornings, and even lately, we haven't done an intense run outside on the track in the evening. Anything intense we've done in the evening, we've done at the gym, indoors, either the indoor track or the treadmill — and we've done that earlier in the evening. It's definitely made a difference this summer — I haven't had that experience of really bad sleep after an intense evening session, which lines up exactly with what the study found. That's a real contrast to the last few summers, when we did those kinds of workouts pretty routinely.

Abbie: Yeah, no, I agree — we did one last week at the gym, worked out around 6 p.m.

Alex: Slept fine.

Abbie: Slept brilliantly that night — and that was a hard interval workout.

Alex: I just ran a mile as fast as I could on the treadmill, so that was tough — but I felt great that night, because I had four, four and a half hours before bed.

His and Hers: Menopause and Andropause

Alex: Let's take a bit of a gendered look at this — his versus hers sleep in our 40s and beyond. What's changed as we move into our 40s? Really, it's these biological and age-related shifts that affect sleep, and the most obvious of these — since we're talking his and hers — is perimenopause and menopause for women. And I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but I learned a new word doing research for this episode: andropause, for men. I'm 45 years old, and I'd never heard the term "andropause" before — so, educating me on something new, Abbie. But both menopause and andropause mess with your sleep architecture.

Abbie: Yeah, so I'll take the "hers" side, predictably. As you said, Alex, there's a lot of information and shared experience out there for women, on how perimenopause and menopause affect sleep. I think it's one of the biggest areas women struggle with through the transition, especially since the full transition through menopause can take years — so you're feeling that impact cumulatively over a long period. The obvious, common issues are night sweats, insomnia, and that hormonal link to core body temperature regulation. I haven't had night sweats myself, but I'm definitely much more sensitive to heat than I was when I was younger.

Alex: You're always saying I'm hot — like I'm making you hotter.

Abbie: He is hot! But if the room isn't around the right temperature — it doesn't have to be perfect, but once it gets above a certain point, I get really uncomfortable. So there's definitely a real impact there. The other thing I've had lately is itching, and restless legs — those keep you awake, because suddenly your whole body is itching uncontrollably. It's so frustrating.

Alex: Do you want to talk about the sleep barriers you build?

Abbie: Well — that's actually because my hip hurts sometimes, so — no, I'll be honest, I do create a sleep barrier, because Alex is hot, he makes me hot, so I put a barrier between us. I'll fold the sheet down to make a little barrier — as long as his body heat isn't leaking onto it.

Alex: It's bad in summer too — one day this week, the low temperature here in Dallas was supposed to be 85. The overnight low.

Abbie: And the house doesn't cool off. That particular night I woke up in the middle of the night thinking, "oh my god, I'm so hot, so uncomfortable." I got up to go to the bathroom, came back, and thought the same thing — and then Alex said, "Oh my god, it's so hot in here." That's when we realized our air conditioning had broken. So I was actually relieved that it wasn't just full-blown night sweats.

Alex: My problem in the summer is that I don't like sleeping under just a thin sheet — I like a blanket, or something substantial covering me, even in summer. I guess psychologically it makes me feel safer or something, I don't know. But we did recently have a night where the comforter was dirty, and we just slept under the sheet, and I actually slept well.

Abbie: I was surprised, that night. But yeah, that's a good point — when we go back to England, my mum loves the duvet, and I find them a bit too hot. So there's a lot around that temperature regulation piece. I've talked about this with friends who are a similar age, about the different things that help — timing of exercise is a good one, since obviously you raise your body temperature doing something like running, or heavy cardio, and like you mentioned earlier, Alex, it takes a while for everything to reset. So if you've raised your body temperature and then try to go to sleep — or even with a really hot bath, which can be relaxing before bed, but if I get too hot in the bath, it takes a long time to cool back down. So there's a lot to think about there. I do find it helpful to keep the room at a good temperature, but I also think there's a lot of noise out there for women, about things like supplements and different products to help with menopause — we could honestly do a whole episode on that.

Alex: So what do the experts actually say — what's the best thing women can do to help with sleep disruption caused by menopause?

Abbie: They talk about all kinds of things — different supplements, timing your exercise, cooling products and cooling pads, all that kind of stuff. Honestly, I think you have to try things and find what works for you — a lot of it is just noise. But I did find a couple of really interesting studies I wanted to share. There was a 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis that concluded exercise interventions can be recommended specifically to menopausal women to improve sleep. And Johns Hopkins also noted that regular exercise helps people going through menopause fall and stay asleep, and that athletes tend to be highly efficient sleepers in general. I thought that was interesting — you might not automatically think of exercise as contributing to sleep, but the research really ties running and exercise directly to better sleep health.

Alex: Yeah, so it sounds like the best thing you can do is keep up a strong exercise routine, when it comes to helping with sleep disruptions caused by menopause. On the guys' side, andropause is real, but quieter — you do see a trend of declining testosterone in men as they age, and, interestingly, increased sleep apnea risk associated with andropause. I'm sure we've all had someone in our family who had sleep apnea and had to wear one of those masks at night, which can be really challenging, especially for couples. And the other thing we mentioned earlier on the men's side is prostate-related nighttime waking — you naturally, and pretty commonly as you get into your 40s and beyond, wake up more to go to the bathroom. So it's always worth keeping an eye on those signals, whether while you're sleeping, or when you're waking up.

Abbie: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense — and I think it's the same for women. You just notice you need to get up and go more during the night. So, again, thinking about not taking on too much hydration too late in the evening, to reduce that need.

Common Ground: Stress, Alcohol, and Life

Alex: The thing I think there's a lot of common ground between men and women on, when it comes to sleep as you age, is just stress. We talked about this in a previous episode — alcohol use, and how it can affect you as you age. There was actually a 2024 study that found a dose-response relationship, where REM sleep disruption began at roughly two standard drinks, and got progressively worse with more alcohol. That study concluded that any benefit alcohol offers in helping you fall asleep faster is outweighed by the REM disruption it causes over the course of the night. So there's this idea that a glass of wine will help you sleep — well, it may help you fall asleep, but it disrupts your REM cycle, which is where a lot of that important rest happens. That's typically also when you're dreaming, during REM sleep — so if you wake up and remember a lot of dreams, that's a sign you had a lot of good REM sleep, and your body was repairing itself.

Abbie: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense — that alcohol might help you fall asleep, but it doesn't mean you're getting that good-quality sleep, like you mentioned. The other one you brought up earlier in the episode is just life — kids, work, that kind of thing, especially in the busy years when you're working, maybe climbing the career ladder, and you've got teenagers who are up later than they used to be. I remember putting my kids to bed at 7 p.m. when they were little — now they're not, and we go to bed before them.

Alex: Oh my gosh, I remember those days — it was such a relief.

Abbie: Exactly.

Alex: Yeah, but then you get the after-bedtime hours and think, oh, I can relax for the rest of the evening. Fun times.

Abbie: Absolutely. But yeah — with kids, dogs who suddenly bark and decide they want to go out —

Alex: Older dogs — and if you've ever had one, you know, older dogs can really disrupt your sleep.

Abbie: Yeah, and we've got a dog who's getting up there in age, and she forgets — she forgets she's been fed, forgets she's been outside, and barks like the world is ending.

Alex: Yeah, she's disrupted our sleep a time or two. I had a dog when I was younger who, as she got older, developed kind of doggy dementia and anxiety — and if there was a thunderstorm, that's when you'd really never sleep. That can be tough.

Where We Diverge

Abbie: Well — where we really diverge, Alex, is around some of the things you mentioned earlier, about your need for total darkness. Alex has got a bit of an obsession with total darkness — there's nothing wrong with wanting a dark room, but he's also balanced things up against the TV, to hide the tiny little red light on it.

Alex: That's right — I don't like light, or LED lights, filling up the room. There's even a lamp —

Abbie: Tiny, tiny dot.

Alex: There's a lamp I actually unplug, because it has a tiny dot on top that gives off light I can see in the room. Yeah, I admit I have a bit of an obsession about it.

Abbie: He does. And all the doors have to be shut too — closet door, bathroom door, all shut.

Alex: That goes back to being a kid — they always told you if there's a fire in the house, you need the doors closed.

Abbie: There's not going to be a fire in the closet — what's going to start a fire in a closet?

Alex: The closet thing is honestly just — I don't want the boogeyman coming out of there.

Abbie: Yeah, because that's obviously exactly where he'd come from.

Alex: I don't know — I like the doors closed, it's just one of those deep-rooted things you carry through life. What you don't like is any kind of relaxing sound playing.

Abbie: I do not find them relaxing in the least. Alex likes things like thunderstorms, or ocean waves, wind whistling through trees — he's got all these sounds programmed into his alarm clock. They just keep me awake — I'm not good at falling asleep to sounds like that. He'll set it to run for three or four hours, and I'm just awake through the whole thing.

Alex: But you're out — I basically play it all night.

Abbie: Oh god.

Alex: Yeah, and it also drowns out any kid noise, which is helpful, since we're pretty far out from things.

Abbie: Yeah, exactly — that's permanently burned into my brain at this point. What about your bedtime routines, Alex?

Alex: What about it? That's a pretty open-ended question — what about my bedtime routine?

Abbie: Do you have some bedtime routines you like to follow?

Alex: I'm not sure what you're getting at here — why don't you just share with the group, since you clearly think this is funny?

Abbie: Oh my gosh, somebody's getting grumpy.

Alex: No, I just don't know what's so funny about bedtime routines. I like to go to bed at a reasonable hour — is that funny?

Abbie: Everybody likes to go to bed — just at different times.

Alex: Yes. When we were doing the run streak, this was a real problem, because I'd be tired by 9:30 or so and want to go to bed early — especially since I was getting up at 5:30 to run, and you weren't running until maybe an hour or an hour and a half after me, since you work from home. So that really highlighted our different bedtimes.

Abbie: I think I actually came closer to matching your bedtime, honestly.

Alex: I do like to put my phone away — that's important to me.

Abbie: Oh yes — although you often still have your phone, listening to a meditation, in keeping with the whole analog thing.

Alex: Sometimes, yeah — or reading the news. Sometimes. What were you finding so funny, exactly?

Abbie: I was just asking! I didn't think it was funny at all — what was funny was your reaction. It was like, "what? What are you getting at?"

Alex: Yeah, I thought you were trying to — I mean, if we were going to joke about bedtime routines, it'd be a lot funnier to joke about yours, which is basically, "I have to finish this crossword puzzle."

Abbie: I love a crossword puzzle.

Alex: I can't put the crossword down — Alex is a psycho, apparently.

Abbie: Alex will stop an episode halfway through, or stop a movie after an hour. Who does that? That's the great thing about streaming — you can just pick it back up. You should finish it! I want to know what happens — I don't want to wait, pick it back up later, and have forgotten everything that happened.

Alex: By the way, analog was great for that too — you just had a VHS tape, stopped it, pressed play later wherever you left off.

Abbie: I liked it better when you didn't have that option — you just had to watch the episode when it aired.

Alex: Yeah, I preferred that too, honestly — which is why I sometimes like to just turn on the TV to whatever's on. So there you go, that's where we diverge on sleep.

Abbie: Yes, absolutely. And I think the other thing is, you can't control all those variables, right — so you just have to focus on the realistic wins you can have. Like a consistent wake-up time, which was actually found to be more powerful than a consistent bedtime, which I thought was interesting.

Alex: Right.

Abbie: Temperature control, cutting off caffeine at a certain point in the day — like not having coffee after 4 p.m., or whatever works for you. But some stuff you just can't control — we can't control the dog barking.

Alex: Right, yeah.

Myth vs. Reality

Alex: Well — there you have it, some discussion around sleep. We thought we'd close it off today with a myth-versus-reality segment — a fun, fast-paced round where we throw out a statement and decide if it's a myth or a reality. I'll skip the first one on my list, since we already covered that one. So, Abbie — myth or reality: you can catch up on sleep on the weekend.

Abbie: Well, we definitely do this sometimes — sorry, I've got a sleeping dog next to me who's decided to get up and move.

Alex: We did this exact thing this weekend.

Abbie: So — we definitely catch up on sleep on weekends, but what I think is interesting, like I mentioned earlier, is that a consistent wake-up time is actually much better for your sleep health than a consistent bedtime.

Alex: Yes, I agree with that — I'm a big proponent of a consistent wake time.

Abbie: Oh, you love a lie-in on the weekend — stop lying. Okay, Alex, what about this one: older athletes just need less sleep.

Alex: That has to be a myth — that doesn't make any sense.

Abbie: Yeah, no, exactly — if anything, you probably need more sleep as you get older, right?

Alex: Right.

Abbie: It's just harder to get it.

Alex: Yeah, if that were true, it would go against everything we've talked about today. Are there actually people who believe that?

Abbie: I don't know, but there are people who think you can survive on very little sleep. Wasn't it Margaret Thatcher who supposedly got by on like three hours a night?

Alex: Leonardo da Vinci, maybe? Wasn't he one of those too?

Abbie: I think it's actually really bad for you to survive on that little sleep, long-term.

Alex: Kramer, on Seinfeld — he didn't sleep much either. Okay, here's one for you, Abbie: if I'm not falling asleep instantly, something's wrong.

Abbie: No — like I said, I got told this when I was going through some sleep trouble. More than anything, what you want to avoid is that anxiety of, "oh my god, I can't fall asleep, I'm never going to fall asleep." It's pretty normal to take a little while.

Alex: I had that when I was dealing with a blood pressure issue and didn't know what was going on — I was having real trouble sleeping, and once I got on blood pressure medication, I was fine. So, interesting — that kind of pattern can be really tough to break once you're in it.

Abbie: Yeah, definitely. I think it's easy to say, hard to do, but just trying to relax and let yourself fall asleep naturally — which might mean there's a bit of a delay between lying down and actually falling asleep — is the right approach.

Alex: So, Abbie, what about this one: menopause just means bad sleep now, nothing to be done about it.

Abbie: I think menopause does mean your sleep is likely to be affected, but it's different for everybody. Like we mentioned earlier, there are things you can do about it — and I found it really interesting that exercise is one of the best-supported interventions for improving sleep during menopause. There's always something you can try to help you sleep better — you don't just have to white-knuckle through it, especially given the transition can last up to 15 years. What about this one, Alex — melatonin. I actually didn't know much about it until I moved to the US, it's not as common in the UK.

Alex: They don't know about melatonin? You can't get it the same way over there?

Abbie: Yeah, no. But — "melatonin is basically harmless, take as much as you want."

Alex: That's not true. With melatonin, you really don't need much of it as a supplement — if you take higher doses, it can throw off your natural rhythm and chemicals, and leave you feeling groggy. Did you know I used to take it every night? I can't remember if I was still doing that before I met you — I think I stopped before then. But yeah, I used to take melatonin every night, and it worked great — if you took the right amount, it really helped you fall asleep. Sounds crazy now, but I just stopped eventually, decided I didn't need it anymore. You definitely don't want to take a high dose, though.

Abbie: I used to give my kids vitamin gummies and tell them they were melatonin.

Alex: The old placebo effect.

Abbie: Worked really well on them. I don't think I've ever actually taken melatonin myself — maybe once or twice. But whenever I've been sick with the flu and taken something like Night Nurse, I find it puts me to sleep, but I feel really groggy the next day.

Alex: Night Nurse?

Abbie: Or NyQuil, whatever it's called there — it's called Night Nurse in the UK.

Alex: Oh wow, really? Night Nurse — I learned something new today. I love me some NyQuil, honestly — I almost look forward to being sick, just so I can take it. That's some good sleep right there, even if I feel groggy the next day. Worth it. Okay, what about this one: a good workout guarantees a good night's sleep.

Abbie: Well, like we said earlier, I think that's a myth — if you do something really intense late in the evening, it's generally not going to help you sleep. But something like a nice, gentle yoga stretch before bed — I find I sleep really well after that.

Alex: Yeah, same — I find that really helpful before bed too.

Abbie: And lastly, Alex: "I feel fine on five hours of sleep — I'm just one of those people who doesn't need eight hours."

Alex: No, that's a bit of a myth. I think those people are pretty rare. It's been shown that on five or six hours, I don't feel great — seven, I'm okay. This idea of exactly eight hours — I don't think that's quite it either, I believe the range they give is seven to nine hours. And there are plenty of nights where I only get seven, especially with me waking up earlier than you, and you not wanting to go to bed early.

Abbie: There have been plenty of nights lately where I've actually been going to bed early.

Alex: I only get seven sometimes, but yeah — this idea of, "oh, I'm special, I don't need seven or eight hours," like those people we mentioned earlier, da Vinci or whoever — I think that's pretty rare. It's important to get seven to nine hours a night.

Abbie: Yeah, and I think those people have just adapted to being tired, right? It doesn't mean — it's an interesting argument, because they don't actually know how they'd feel on more sleep. They're just assuming.

Alex: Right. And I'd wonder what that's doing to their lifespan — I'd think doing that consistently might shorten it.

Abbie: Yeah, I really think so too. And that's actually where wearables have been really interesting — I know a few people who've got the Oura Ring, and find it really good for sleep data, and we've found the same with our Garmins.

Wrap-Up

Abbie: Well, that's it for this episode of the Practically Fit podcast. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, please share it with your family and friends, or leave us a review or a comment. And if you've got a story to share about your own experience with sleep and fitness, send it over to alex@practically.fit.

Alex: Yeah, and I just want to mention — we launched a new website this week. We've moved to our own standalone site, no longer on Substack — you can head to practically.fit. I think it's going to be a great home for us, so we're excited to have our own standalone website. And if you were receiving our emails before, you'll keep receiving them as normal, as you'll have seen with today's email, straight to your inbox along with the podcast.

Abbie: Thanks for doing that, Alex — you're such a good little guru about this stuff. Really appreciate you getting us onto a new website and platform, and hope everyone enjoys it. What's our topic for the next episode, Alex?

Alex: That's right — Abbie, we're going to talk about protein. It might be a new concept to people — have you even heard of protein before, Abbie? Before 2026?

Abbie: I have heard of protein — you can even get it at Starbucks now, protein in your coffee and juice.

Alex: I thought protein was brand new, based on all the marketing lately — it's crazy. So, yeah, we're going to talk about the protein craze — we're adding protein to everything now, how important is that really, and maybe we'll bring in creatine too. Protein and creatine, we're going all out. So stay tuned for that. But until then — remember, when it comes to fitness, you don't have to be perfect, you just have to be practical. We'll catch you on the next one.