If you've been lying awake at 3am wondering why your sleep fell apart in your 40s, the answer isn't stress or aging — it's your hormones. Estrogen and progesterone have been running your sleep system for decades. When they start to fluctuate in perimenopause, everything unravels. Here's what's actually happening in your body, what the research says works, and what I've tried myself — honestly.

I hit a wall last October — flat, grey, unexplainable. When I tracked my eating, the pattern was obvious: two weeks of airport food, zero vegetables, zero care. My gut was wrecked. Turns out, so was my brain. The gut-brain axis is real, it's researched, and the 100 trillion microbes living in your digestive system are directly shaping your mood, anxiety, and mental resilience. Here's what the science says — and what I actually changed.