I Spent 18 Months Thinking Something Was Seriously Wrong. It Was Hormones.
Waking at 3am every night. Losing words mid-sentence. Told it was stress. Then I found the pattern.
I had no idea what was happening to me. It never occurred to me it was hormones. In fact I spent the next 18 months going to all these doctors and specialists thinking something was seriously wrong.
My sister Jen was the same. Notes on her phone for literally everything. Sunday calls she skipped. Waking at 3am with her heart racing. Doctors wrote stress. I wrote stress. We were both wrong.
The swing, the calm and the sleep move together: 3 pieces from 1 change. Fixing 1 while the others keep swinging is why 6 bottles from 3 stores never added up. You need all six, together, at the same time.
What Women Say After Switching
"Takes about a month but I sleep through the night now very well now that my blood sugar has been balanced."
Sarah M."Eating a high fat high protein snack before bed and an apple first thing in the morning has been so helpful for me."
Jennifer L."I feel like myself again. I'm finally waking up well rested."
Michelle K."I take functional mushroom supplements and I will tell you that if I don't take them, I'm in outer space. Highly recommend!"
Amanda R."I am finding that lion’s mane supplement is helping me"
Lisa T."I feel like a different woman after 7 months."
Karen P.What to Expect, and When
I sent Jen a bag that week and boxed up most of her bottles. Here is how it went, week by week. Before you start, write down how many nights a week you wake up at 3am, and 1 thing your brain won't let you do right now. Check again at week 8.
The 1st 2 weeks, nothing either of us could point to. That is why I tell women not to judge it early: it is 1 mug at night, not a pill that works overnight.
By week 3 she told me, almost in passing, that she'd slept until 5:30 for the 1st time in months. This from the woman who used to wake at 3am every night and just lay there.
By week 5 she ran her whole team meeting without a single note on her phone. By week 7 she drove the highway by herself to see our mom, 2 hours each way.
By week 9 she picked up our Sunday call at 8 at night and talked for an hour. At her next visit her doctor looked at her chart and said, "Sounds like the stress finally settled down." When something finally worked, it got filed under stress. I didn't correct her. I knew exactly what had changed.
So, What Are Your 3 Options?
I want to be direct. There are 3 realistic paths from here. Only 1 covers all 3 pieces.
What I Now Tell Women to Try
Here's what actually matters, whatever you try. It has to work without hormones, with ashwagandha, the root that was actually studied in women in perimenopause, not a guess. It has to have no caffeine, so it isn't adding to the 3am wake-up. And it has to be something you have at night with a little protein, not 1 more pill to remember in the morning.
For me, mushroom chocolate milk covers all 3. It's organic ashwagandha for the hormone swing, organic cocoa with no caffeine for the evening, and protein from grass-fed collagen for the night. It comes with a 90 day money back guarantee, so you can find out for yourself.
"Stress is real. It just wasn't enough. The 3am wake-ups, the fog and the rage were 1 pattern, her hormones changing, and nobody had named it."
I told Lynn all of this at her next visit, and she listened the way she used to before all this started, with her phone put away. She's 3 months in now, and she's back at dinner with her girlfriends every month, which for Lynn is huge.
She told me last week she's thinking about planning a girls' trip again, maybe just a weekend at the lake to start.
If you've been told it's just stress, or that you're too young, or that your blood work is normal, this is what I wish I'd understood years before I almost handed my own sister the same note I handed Lynn. I have no reason to tell you any of this except that I wrote stress on too many charts, and I'm done doing it.
So women go on hearing it's stress. Keeping notes on their phones for literally everything. Skipping the Sunday calls. Waking at 3am. Losing 2 years of their lives, their words, to something nobody would name.
Lynn came in last week and asked how my sister was doing. She laughed and said, "I get my information from HAVING A BODY." 22 years of telling women it was stress, and it took my patients to remind me to believe the woman sitting in front of me.
A mug of mushroom chocolate milk comes out to less than the afternoon coffee my sister gave up, and it's backed by a 90 day money back guarantee, so there's nothing to lose by actually finding out. Go get it.
Questions Women Ask
It is far more likely perimenopause brain fog. In the SWAN study, word memory dropped in late perimenopause and then recovered, so the fog is real and temporary. Losing a word, forgetting a name and blanking mid-sentence are common. If it scares you, ask your doctor for a memory check and ask about perimenopause.
Women describe it in plain words: keeping notes on the phone for literally everything, not finding the word they are looking for, forgetting a coworker's name in a meeting, stopping mid-sentence. Many fear early dementia. It often comes with broken sleep, anxiety and a tired that gets terrible from 5pm onwards.
Start with sleep, because the hormone swings that wake you at 3am make the next day's fog worse. Cut the wine and the late coffee, eat protein in the evening and ask your doctor to check your iron and ferritin. A warm, caffeine-free night drink with protein and ashwagandha covers the sleep side.
In perimenopause, estrogen and progesterone swing, and progesterone's calming action on the brain's GABA receptors swings with it. Blood sugar can also dip at night. The result is waking at 2 or 3am with a racing heart, even after a normal heart monitor (Troia et al., 2025). Ask about perimenopause, not only stress.
In an 8 week, randomized, placebo-controlled study of 100 women in perimenopause, ashwagandha root extract lowered menopause symptom scores compared with placebo (Gopal et al., 2021). It is 1 study, and it works without hormones. Women use it for the hormone swing, the anxiety and the 3am wake-ups.
Yes. A warm drink made with organic cocoa and no caffeine can work at night, and many women use it in place of the evening wine and the late coffee. Look for protein for the 3am dip, 0g sugar, no melatonin and an ashwagandha amount that was studied in women in perimenopause.