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Waking up from your previously peaceful sleep, you roll over and check the clock to see that it’s 3am. That’s the same time you woke up last night. And the night before.
If that sounds familiar, it is: night awakening It happens to many people. Waking up multiple times during the night is a natural phenomenon, often caused by sleep architecture (the stages of sleep that repeat each night).
These awakenings usually last only a few seconds to a few minutes. It can be a problem if you wake up frequently during the night or have trouble falling back asleep. Here’s what experts say may help.
Sleep architecture refers to four elements. stages of sleep Dr. Brandon Peters Matthews, a neurologist at Virginia Mason Franciscan Health in Seattle, says people cycle around every 90 to 120 minutes at night.
The cycle begins with light sleep, moves to deeper sleep, and then occurs in a third stage called “deepest sleep.”slow wave sleep” Peters-Matthews said. The fourth stage, known as Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, where brain activity rises to almost reached levels normal activities while awake —It’s often after this stage that people wake up naturally, and the cycle starts over again when they go back to sleep, he said.
“We tend to go to bed at about the same time every night, and our cycles are about the same length, so we’re likely to wake up at the same time during the night,” says Peters-Matthews. Most of these awakenings are short and forgotten, but “he may have one or two cycles where he wakes up in the middle of the night and looks at the clock and realizes the time.”
According to Dr. Michelle Drerup, director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at the Cleveland Clinic, waking up multiple times during the night is usually not harmful to your health, as long as you go back to sleep within about 5 to 10 minutes. He says there is no.
On the other hand, if you wake up multiple times within an hour, your sleep cycle may become fragmented and you may not be able to get deep sleep, Drerup said. These frequent awakenings can be a sign of a sleep disorder, such as sleep apnea or a sleep disorder. nocturnal urinationshe added.
When a person wakes up naturally during the night, they are more likely to remember that it happened later in the night. At this time, people typically have a longer REM sleep phase, less light sleep, and instead a longer deep sleep phase during the first half of the night.
“People will say, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m getting a solid four hours of sleep.’ And I feel like I’m waking up better. And that’s based on our sleep architecture. It’s also very normal,” Drerup said.
It’s often a person’s emotional response to arousal that causes the problem, and if that response causes prolonged wakefulness, they can develop secondary insomnia, says Peters-Matthews. said.
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Dr. Brandon Peters Matthews, a neurologist at Virginia Mason Franciscan Health in Seattle, says a person’s emotional response to waking up during the night can affect the quality of their sleep.
“If someone wakes up in the middle of the night and the first thing they do is look at their alarm clock and check the time, that’s when they feel irritated, upset, anxious, anticipating the next day. It’s a reaction.’ That’s a problem,” he said.
Dr. Cathy Goldstein, a neurologist and sleep medicine physician at the University of Michigan Health, said a person’s circadian rhythm, or the body’s biological 24-hour clock, may also be at play.
your circadian rhythm It tells your body it’s time to go to bed and tends to match your past sleep-wake cycles and light exposure throughout the day. When this rhythm is disrupted or your sleep-wake cycle changes significantly, your body doesn’t know when to get deep, high-quality sleep, said Goldstein, who is also a professor of neurology at the university. Michigan Sleep Disorders Center in Ann Arbor.
“Circadian rhythms are our internal body clocks, which time when we are awake and when we are asleep. Because they time most of our physiological processes, our bodies We do what we need to do at the right time of the day,” Goldstein said.
Circadian rhythms and sleep architecture change with age, which may be why some people feel like they sleep more deeply than they did when they were younger. As people get older, they tend to spend more time in the light stages of sleep, she added.
Goldstein said these cycles are inherent and can make people more night owls or early risers, have difficulty maintaining work schedules that don’t align with an individual’s biological cycles, and can make people more prone to day owls or early risers. It is said that it may cause drowsiness.
Even if you often wake up early for work, it can be difficult to fall asleep at a time when you can get enough sleep. Additionally, many night owls tend to go to bed late on weekends, which can cause sleepiness known as “social jet lag” and weaken circadian rhythms, resulting in less deep sleep and more wakefulness. Possibly, Goldstein said. However, there are ways to adjust your body clock.
Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, and have natural light and dim light throughout the day. artificial lighting When taken at night, Goldstein says, it strengthens the amplitude of your circadian rhythm (the peaks and troughs of your cycle), leading to more restful sleep.
It may also be helpful to take a very low dose of melatonin, less than 0.5 milligrams, a few hours before a person naturally falls asleep, which may help speed up the body’s internal clock, she says. added.
The most important thing to do when you wake up in the middle of the night is to avoid looking at the clock, Peters-Matthews says. “If your alarm doesn’t go off, it’s not time to wake up. It doesn’t matter what time it is. You can roll over, get comfortable, and go back to sleep.”
If you don’t fall asleep again within 15 minutes, Drerup said it’s best to get out of bed to avoid waking up. She recommends doing quiet activities that will help you feel sleepy again, like meditating or listening to music.
“Our brains are highly associative and easily conditioned, so when we’re in bed for a long time and we’re awake, our brains associate the bed with worrying and doing all sorts of things. “You start to associate waking activities, such as sleep. In addition to sleep, getting out of bed breaks that connection,” Drerup said.
Peters-Matthews says it’s also important to make sure you aren’t being woken up by outside factors, such as disturbances from your sleep partner. “It’s important to optimize your sleep environment. …In some cases, that means keeping pets out of the bedroom and optimizing noise, light, and temperature within the bedroom environment.”
But if your wakefulness is caused naturally by your sleep structure and doesn’t affect your ability to function the next day, there’s no need to worry, Goldstein says.
