I’m (Maybe) Perimenopausal and on Hormonal Birth Control—the Eight Sleep Pod Finally Stopped My 3 a.m. Wake-Ups
A 43-year-old 'Woman's World' editor on hormonal birth control who can't stay asleep puts this celebrity-loved sleep pod to the test
Key Takeaways
- Eight Sleep's pod reduced nighttime hot flashes by 56 percent in perimenopausal women.
- Women on hormonal birth control actually sleep warmer—the pod adapts to that.
- Middle-of-the-night wake-ups improved by 45 percent after one month in Eight Sleep's study.
It’s 3:06 a.m. and I get that sinking feeling as my eyes blink open. I’m wide awake. And it’s not from noise—my partner sleeps quietly next to me. It’s not from my 9-year-old—at this moment, at least, she hasn’t yet wedged herself into my side of the bed. It’s just me and the dark of night. Cue the scrolling thoughts as my mind starts racing around in circles and my heart beats a little faster. This has been happening ever since I turned 40. Melatonin, magnesium, white noise: I tried them all, but nothing can quite keep me asleep.
For context: I’m a 43-year-old “elder Millennial” on hormonal birth control and, sure, maybe, potentially perimenopausal. Perimenopause always seems to slip just out of the grasp of my contemporaries on the group chat (it seems like everything after 40 could be perimenopause)—and when I asked my doctor about it, she said it’s hard to test with a Nexplanon implant pumping hormones into my arm. A combination of all of the above, it turns out, could be affecting my body temperature at night. Not that I had any idea.
Then I had the chance to try a high-tech smart mattress cover called the Eight Sleep that promised to not only track my sleep cycles (something I was already into as an Oura ring convert) but actually do something about them.
Woman's World Answers
What is the Eight Sleep Pod and how does it work?
The Eight Sleep Pod is a cover that fits over your existing mattress, and like any low-tech mattress cover, it’s comfy and quilted. But inside its fabric layers are water-filled tubes that heat and cool each side of your bed throughout the night—yes, that means your partner’s side can be cool while your side is warm (a huge perk for us!)
On top of the heating and cooling, the device tracks your biometrics—heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), sleep stages, breathing (even snoring)—and uses that data to automatically adjust temperature in real time. Plus, it has an alarm system that you can opt to gently wake you up with a buzzing sensation when you’re in a lighter sleep cycle, within a half-hour of your wake-up time.
An AI feature, called Autopilot, learns your patterns and makes personalized recommendations each morning on how you can better optimize your day and bedtime for an even better night’s sleep the next night.
Celebrity fans include Courteney Cox (“That was a big splurge that I love, it’ll change your life”) and Mel B (“It’s genius”), plus Halle Berry, Rita Ora and Molly Sims.
Why I decided to try the Eight Sleep Pod
I’ll be honest: When I first heard “smart mattress cover,” it sounded like a glorified electric blanket for tech bros. But I love a sleep tracker and I love my hot water bottle—and my boyfriend would be happy sleeping every night at the Ice Hotel. Most importantly, I was desperate to put the kibosh on my nighttime wake-ups—and the science turned out to be pretty enticing.
Perimenopause or no, here’s the part I didn’t know about being on hormonal birth control: It actually shifts your core body temperature upward—and explains why I like a warm bed. “Women on hormonal birth control prefer warmer Pod temperatures. That matches the research showing that when you’re on hormonal birth control, your core temperature is actually warmer,” says Nicole Moyen, PhD, Eight Sleep’s director of science and clinical research. “Your whole thermoregulatory range has shifted upward, which is probably why temperatures that used to feel fine now feel too cold.”
And my sleep disruption could be a clue that I am indeed approaching perimenopause. Sarah de la Torre, MD, a double board-certified ob-gyn and chief medical officer at Joylux, a women’s health tech company focusing on intimate wellness, analyzed symptoms from more than 23,000 women and found nearly 40 percent of perimenopausal women reported sleep disruption—before their cycles even became irregular. “Women may be losing sleep, struggling with focus and feeling emotionally off while still being told by their providers that they are ‘not there yet,'” she says.
Eight Sleep Pod setup: How do you know if you’re a hot or cold sleeper?
The app starts by asking a number of questions about your age and lifestyle and whether you run hot or cold—and fair warning, you’re probably going to get this wrong. “People tend to think they’re a much colder sleeper than they are by our definition,” says Moyen. “A lot of times people will override our recommendations and make it much colder—and then they’ll wake up way too cold.” (I absolutely did this on night one. I went hot at first and had to adjust it slightly cooler, which seemed to make a noticeable difference.) The system draws on millions of nights of user data to calibrate its initial recommendations, so you might want to give it the ol’ college try before you start overriding.
How Eight Sleep helps with perimenopause hot flashes
While whether or not I’m in perimenopause remains TBD, what I have learned is that the intersection of sleep and pre-menopausal symptoms like temperature spikes is real. Your brain has a thermoregulatory comfort zone, and from perimenopause, that zone becomes smaller. “What happens in menopause is that range narrows [even further],” says Moyen. “Even though it’s a really slight lowering of core temperature—about 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit—we’re lowering [the Pod temperature] enough to keep people from exceeding it and triggering a hot flash.”
That’s right, if you do wake up with a hot flash, double-clicking the center button on the side of your mattress cover activates “Hot Flash Mode”, which rapidly cools the Pod to its coldest temperature, then gradually rewarms you. “A lot of members said: ‘I’m getting up, I’m drenched in sweat, I cool myself off and then I get back in bed and I’m freezing,'” says Moyen. “The nice thing is it cools really rapidly and then rewarms you to help you fall back asleep.”
In Eight Sleep’s study of peri- and postmenopausal women, nighttime hot flashes dropped 56 percent after just 14 nights—and that’s from simply sleeping on the Pod, not even from actively using the hot flash mode.
The 3 a.m. wake-up problem: temperature or anxiety—or both?
This is the part that surprised me most. My wake-ups never felt like hot flashes. They felt like anxiety. Turns out, those might be the same thing. “The hypothalamus governs both your body’s thermostat and your sleep-wake cycle, and during perimenopause, the neurons that become hyperactive from estrogen and progesterone loss sit right next to the area that controls how and when you fall asleep,” says neurologist Romie Mushtaq, MD, ABIHM, author of The Busy Brain Cure. “What feels like waking up anxious and what feels like a temperature spike are often the same hypothalamic event expressing itself in two different ways.”
Your core body temperature naturally makes a U-shape during the night, dipping in the middle and rising toward morning. In perimenopausal women, that curve flattens with age. “The Pod essentially helps to restore that U—and that’s what’s necessary for good deep sleep, good REM sleep, reducing wakenings,” says Moyen. In Eight Sleep’s research, insomnia improved by 45 percent at one month and that improvement held at 6 months.
Dr. de la Torre puts the stakes plainly: “When you fix the waking, you fix so much more. Better sleep means clearer thinking the next day, a more stable mood, more energy. Sleep isn’t a nice-to-have during perimenopause. It’s the foundation for how women feel, think and function in every other part of their day.”
What my Eight Sleep data showed
After two months of using the Eight Sleep Pod 5, my deep sleep has improved—by as much as 21 percent—as has my HRV (the longevity metric du jour) and average resting heart rate. The Autopilot AI, which tracks heart rate, HRV, sleep stages and the previous night’s quality, adjusts each night’s temperature accordingly and sends a plain-language morning summary—less a score and more an actual explanation of what happened and why. One caveat: If your 9-year-old crawls in bed at 3 a.m., you may find yourself reading her sleep data instead of yours. “We’re going to be tracking whoever’s in the bed—pets included,” says Moyen.
Is it worth it?
Courteney Cox called it a “big splurge.” And you know if she’s calling it a splurge, it really is one. At $2,399 (currently on sale from $2,799), she’s not wrong. But she also called it life-changing, and if you’re on hormonal birth control, perimenopausal or menopausal and have tried everything else to keep you asleep, it just might be worth it. (The Eight Sleep site is often running deals, too.)
One thing the Pod can’t do: treat the underlying hormonal cause. “A cooling mattress may help you feel more comfortable tonight, but it is not treating the root cause,” says Dr. Mushtaq, who recommends women also ask their doctors about a full hormone panel—estradiol, progesterone, testosterone—and a frank conversation about hormone replacement therapy (HRT), now called menopausal hormone therapy (MHT). “For the right candidate, HRT addresses the neurobiological root of why sleep is falling apart in the first place.”
For me, a working mom who feels like she’s always juggling, the 3 a.m. wake-ups haven’t disappeared entirely. But they’ve become rare—and on the nights they do happen, I know what to do. That alone feels like enough.
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