Menopause and Sleep //How Eight Sleep’s Pod Is Helping Women Beat Night Sweats

For many women, the first thing menopause takes isn’t mood or energy. It’s sleep. Hot flashes and night sweats tend to arrive in the small hours, and a bed that once felt perfect can go from stifling to chilly in a single night. Eight Sleep, the sleep technology brand, is taking this on with Menopause Mode, a new setting for its Pod that supports women from perimenopause through postmenopause.

The Pod fits over an existing mattress, warms or cools each side of the bed separately and tracks sleep without a wearable. Menopause Mode changes how it works overnight in three ways. First, it cools your side of the bed ahead of the hours when hot flashes are most common, and it learns your preferences over time. That approach was built from more than 57,000 nights of sleep data from 450 peri- and postmenopausal women. Second, when a flush does strike, a button at the side of the bed starts cooling straight away, with no phone needed. Eight in ten women report relief within ten minutes. Third, the app compares your sleep with that of women at the same life stage, showing how things like HRT or an evening glass of wine affect how often you wake.

The early results are promising. In Eight Sleep’s own study, women reported 56 per cent fewer hot flashes at night, on average, with temperature control switched on.

“Nearly every woman will go through menopause, and for most of them sleep is the first thing to break,” says co-founder Alexandra Zatarain.

Menopause Mode follows the launch of Pregnancy Mode earlier this year. Both are part of the brand’s Women’s Sleep Initiative, which has analysed more than three million hours of women’s sleep.

Menopause Mode is rolling out now through the Eight Sleep app on iOS and Android. It needs a Pod and an active Autopilot membership, both available at eightsleep.com.