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Welcome to Strength Renewed, the podcast that celebrates new beginnings for women 40 and beyond. This is your go-to space for empowering conversations about building resilience, strength, and confidence—inside and out.
Discover how to fuel your body with good nutrition, train smart, and cultivate a strong mindset to thrive in midlife and beyond. Whether you're navigating hormonal changes, starting (or restarting) your fitness journey, or simply striving to feel your best, Strength Renewed offers expert advice, real-life stories, and actionable strategies to help you live a vibrant, powerful life.
It's never too late to redefine your strength.
00:17
Anyway, just how are you? How are you? I love it. We started this conversation with I thought this whole time you wrote like holding like a like a little thing, a squishy thing.
00:35
Like, so you guys can't see what Mickey is holding. Like what I thought was like one of those little like squish balls that when you're like, you know, just to kind of like relax you when you're talking, I was like, oh, I kind of like this new little thing she's holding. I'm like, what is it? And you were like petting it and squishing it. And then you're like, oh, no, no, no, no, this is the head of my microphone. It currently is what it did. It fall off or something would happen to your microphone. What happened to the casualty of war?
01:00
Oh, no, no, this is normal. is normal. You hold it when you talk like that. It's a roaming mic. Oh, that's so great. Also, what I find hilarious is that you thought I needed a stress ball, whereas out of both of us for the last half hour, I've been really calm and you've been like hyper, hyper letting it all out. You calming your non-existent stress ball was actually relaxing to me. I was like, oh, you know what I see these things as not even like a stress ball. I just see them as like something to sort of like
01:30
You know, people I've I literally have like one friend and will do I've been on a podcast and she literally will just kind of like move it kind of to the side. It's just sort of like something that they like. It kind of is just sort of like there. guess it's there to calm them. Maybe I need one. Maybe this was this was the thing I needed. You needed a roaming mic and I needed to believe that it was a calming stress thing. I like the way that you put that. Yeah, yeah. So that's all that I needed. It emptied out a little cortisol from the day.
02:00
That's good. That's good. you have to get that cortisol. I started school. I have a little bit of stress. Yeah. I understand that. And it's 834 where you are. Also that. About time for your cortisol levels. Ideally, they'd be close to their lowest, lowest amount to help with your sleep. So anything to help get that cortisol down is going be good. Well, a good laugh worked nicely. So thank you for that. That was really fucking funny. Yeah. Yeah.
02:28
So everybody should go and get a like a little stress thing, a calm thing like ours that are fuzzy and cute. We could have matching aviator nation sweatshirts and massing squishies. Yeah, totally could be. So Jess, tell me then, how much do you sleep a night? um And I was thinking about this. Yeah, it's a good question. It's a bit, you know, it's kind of embarrassing, but I sleep six hours a night.
02:59
Which is just not enough anymore. I think I need, I would say that my sweet spot of sleep where I feel rested and better is seven. Seven is just nice. That I feel like a normal person when I have seven. Six just feels a little bit hard, but my Jake has to get up now for water polo and he just has to get up so early, 5.30, which is insanity levels. And so it's kind of hard for me to like unwind and sort of...
03:28
go into the next thing. And so yeah, I get about six hours. You get makeup sleep during the week? I don't. Well, I don't get makeup sleep at night, but I try to take like little naps. Do those even count? Do 15 minute naps count? Yeah, they do. With your sleep architecture, like you have uh like a 90 minute sleep cycle and that first sort of, people recommend having
03:57
In fact, if you do nap, you don't want to nap beyond 90 minutes, but even that 20 minutes is enough to clear out bit of cognitive, I'm going to say clear out a little bit of cognitive junk and fatigue. And I don't think I'm saying that right. But once you get out and you're a little less groggy, you actually do feel clearer. And it is actually beneficial. And in fact, athletes are often recommending
04:25
are recommended to do the same thing because of the physical amount, the physical stress that they place on their body, that they need to sleep through. So they'll take like 15 or 20 minute naps a couple times a day or up till they can be cumulative. So if they're taking like 45 in the early part of the day and then 45 in the afternoon. Well, in the afternoon, ideally you wouldn't just because it is getting close to that bedtime, but it's in the earlier part of the day. Ideally, I think the recommendation is not to do it after maybe
04:55
three or four o'clock in the afternoon. they might, so professional athletes, I hey, this is just what research tells us. It's not, I couldn't tell you three or four different people I know that would do it, they would, they'd have their morning practice and then come home, have breakfast. And then maybe they'd have another training session and then maybe they'd sleep after lunch to have their final training session or something like that. Yeah. The tracks. I think I have, um
05:24
I do, I take like 15 minute naps, but I usually don't take them. Honestly, I take them probably around three. So it's not ideal, but it's just what I need. And then what's when I can fit it in. In 15 minutes, because you are sleep deprived, I mean, that is not going to impact negatively on your sleep. Probably for you, Jess, is it getting to bed at night that's the issue? Because you've got a lot to do. Yeah, it is. And I am probably fall in that category. Like I think a lot of people where you just,
05:53
it's like you're the house is quiet. Like you I totally get I have so much empathy for people at this time of the day, because they're trying to catch up on work they didn't get a chance to catch up on. And they're cleaning the dishes and they're getting everybody down to bed and whatever it is they're doing if they're working parents. And um and so I think and then then then selfishly you want to like
06:20
have your own little moment of quiet. So you want to read maybe a few pages or you want to watch something or whatever it is that is your nighttime ritual. it's just, you know, and then before you know it, it's it's kind of and then, you know, then you're trying to go to bed. So I do think it's it's it is really hard for me to like actually just kind of shut down. And I don't know why we get those second winds, they call them. Why does that happen?
06:45
Is that just like of a sudden a re-release of cortisol that's like yikes and just spikes up again or something? Yeah, it is. Yeah, that's totally what it is. So in cortisol, melatonin act in opposition. So when cortisol is high, melatonin is suppressed. if so, makes it even more difficult to sleep. you it's like your circadian biology is such an important part in your energy and it becomes attuned to what you do day by day as well. So you can entrain
07:15
yourself to feel more tired at a certain time of day and that tracks with hormone changes and cortisol and melatonin changes and serotonin as well. But particularly that second wind, it is a sign of cortisol dysregulation. Because your cortisol should have been bottoned out at the end of the night. Yet that second wind that people get, they might feel tired, tired, and suddenly they're wide awake. That's your cortisol. It's basically your brain going, okay, so it's not time to go to bed?
07:43
because that lights on and you're watching this, all right, it gets crack on. Yeah. What are some things that you can do to help with that? The most important things are behavioral rather than supplemental, but everyone wants to stop. That's true. Yeah. So for you, it would be going, hey, Michi, we need to schedule our podcast for bit earlier in the day. so you're not doing this at night where you're sort of exposed to that screen time.
08:13
or that blue light, because the blue light that's emitted from your computer, from your device, even if you do have one of those um night saver or night mode functions, still doesn't, for some people, it's still a bit too much. uh But also what your brain is engaged in. So instead of reading something which is pretty trashy and light, which helps you to fall asleep, if you're reading
08:40
I don't know, some sort of World War II history thing or something, know, something that makes you like, it's so, so having material at night that helps you calm down a warm shower or like a hot tub or a sauna, whatever you have available. So you sort of force your body into the sort of a change in sort of temperature. it just tries to cool itself down and then you cool your.
09:04
body temperature. So that's a big part of falling to sleep as well. the lights, so instead of having these lights above our head, which most houses do, having lamps on, like the lamp that's behind me here, that is a warmer tone. And ideally it would be below eye line because your brain reads a different signal from a light that is above your head versus one that is below, below. So you're sort of looking down to that.
09:32
that changes the signals that your brain gets about the time of day. And then of course, having a uh cool bedroom, blackout curtains or an eye mask, super helpful. Not having your device in bed and just using it for, I mean, I'd say not have it near your room, but you can, like it's an alarm, but just don't succumb to looking at your phone in bed. And then of course, from a supplement perspective,
10:00
you would be having something like magnesium or inositol and glycine or theanine or ashwagandha for some, not all the time because you don't want to be taking that one all the time. But there are a number of different things that can help sort of calm you down, but they're probably not going to work if you don't have your behavior sort of set in place. Makes total sense. I think I do a lot of that stuff. just, you know, it's still
10:30
it's still not a perfect system. I think the shutting down and just forcing yourself to shut down. um And this is still actually fairly early on in my evening. So um I think it's just a practice, even if it's just like a half an hour. It's kind of like when you have a small child, like when you're trying to get your kid to go to bed early, you just start with 15 minutes. You just put them down 15 minutes earlier. And I think even like
10:58
15 or 20 minutes earlier, probably for most people of the shutdown phase would actually go a long way because it is true. Even when I take a 15 minute nap and I just, even if I don't fall into a deep sleep and I just close my eyes and just allow my body to fully decompress, I do feel, uh I do, it almost feels like a wash of the brain. Go through a car wash with your car, it feels a little bit like that for your head and brain health is just so important and we don't.
11:26
We don't probably spend enough time really understanding it. And I know that sleep is the root of brain health. So I'm thinking about it a little bit more. And then you always hear cortisol with sleep. Those come up together. I do take, I have a quick question. You talked about all those supplements. And many of them I know, I do magnesium. But people have said before, if you take a multi and you know,
11:55
D or omegas and that's when you take them and you take them at night. Can that be a disadvantage to your sleep? can be. Not the omegas. The omegas you can take at dinner because you need the fat to help with the um absorption. But I would take my multi in the morning because it's got B vitamins and they can activate your brain. That's good. I've been taking my multi at night so I think I have to start changing the time. That's a good idea. And the supplements...
12:25
They can also work on that placebo note as well, Jess. to your point, I agree with you. I don't think you need to go from 10.30, going to bed 10.30 to nine o'clock. But if you could get to bed by 10 and just make that your thing, just slowly sort of draw it back. So you're allowing yourself seven and a half hours in bed, ultimately, to get that seven hours sleep. That would be ideal. But you're...
12:51
supplements can form part of that sleep routine, which then signifies that you're, and again, like I say, you can train your brain in circadian rhythm. So you start getting that familiar message that it's time to go to bed. I love it. It's what I've totally done with calm. I'm sure everybody has drank it. I love it. It's like, literally, I mean, it's a little bit of that magnesium, but it's also a little sweet. It's hot. I do it with hot water and it has been part of the bedtime routine. How much sleep do you get a night?
13:21
I get between seven and eight actually now. So I never used to like a few years ago, I would get between probably six and seven. But just over the last couple of years, I've just dialed in a bit now just feel better for it. Like I enjoy going to bed early. It's in different households. You know, don't have young kids, we're at home ourselves. we only have to think about our own schedules. So I think that
13:51
that makes a real difference. Yeah, that's true. think so. OK, so those are and maybe we'll put them into the show notes, but those are like a lot of good like supplements just to whether you take one or you take none or you take two or you take all. But it's good to sort of know what those are. And out of those supplements, would you take would you take all of them? No, you would just take one of them. Yeah, like I would always take magnesium and then you'd
14:18
You try all the others to see which ones help most, think. Does calm count in the magnesium department? Yeah, lot of people really like it. I like it. I think it tastes good. So I'll work on some of those rituals. I do think that they... Would you say that sleep is at the top of the hierarchy for cortisol levels, like rebalancing of the cortisol levels? It's definitely up there. um Yeah, because it...
14:46
just because if you have disrupted sleep. And you do have elevated cortisol, it's more like I'm not, I don't sort of zone in and out. And I know lots of people on social media talk a lot about cortisol and sure it's a thing, but let's not hyper-focus on it, because I don't think that's helpful. So I just, it's part of the hormone cascade that gets disrupted when you aren't sleeping. Insulin as well. And so all these things impact on how you feel, what your energy does during the day, what types of food you crave. And then that just sort of
15:16
adds to that whole behavioral um piece, which isn't great. No, that's really good. I appreciate, I appreciate the, I appreciate thinking about it like that because I just, it is good to know, like just a little bit, again, all these little like small changes, but a little bit goes a long way. And I think when it comes to sleep, you can get pretty like,
15:41
overwhelmed with all of the information. And I think that just the fact that you're going to bed a little bit earlier and maybe having a little calm and trying not to do it. Sometimes for me, I just save too much of the work that didn't get done during the day to the end of the day. And I just I need to kind of keep working on that algorithm. I think if I just put it in different spots, feel I will feel a lot better. But I have been going for a lot of walks at night after dinner. And that has helped too.
16:10
that has helped. Yeah, that would. one, Jess. I know. Lovely. Everybody gets their thing. Yeah. What are you grateful for today? Well, I'm grateful that I had my microphone, actually, because it just means that I'm not going to get a bollocks from Hubster about not having good sound quality. Well, I'm appreciative, too, that I don't I just get it sounds crystal clear. And it's also a great it's a great story. He's going to have some kind of fun little
16:38
chuckle, I'm sure when he listens to this. I'm grateful for the laugh. I'm grateful for the sleep that I'm going to get tonight and the reminder to laugh. The reminder to laugh a little bit more is probably one of the better ones. I've released my cortisol levels with good sleep and a little bit more laughter. 100%. Thank you for that reminder. Lovely, Jason. See you on the other side.