Waking up at night, in and of itself, is not a problem. However, waking up and staying awake can be.
“If you wake up and start experiencing worry, anxiety or frustration, “It likely activated your sympathetic nervous system, your ‘fight or flight’ system,” explains psychologist and sleep expert Alexa Kane at the Cleveland Clinic.
“When this happens, your brain switches from sleep mode to wake mode. Your mind may start racing and your heart rate and blood pressure may increase. That makes it much harder to get back to sleep.”.
This stress response can lead to midnight insomnia. But it’s not the reason why you often wake up at 3 in the morning. From feeling hot or needing to go to the bathroom to more serious conditions such as sleep apnea, these can lead to awakenings. Since at that time of night it is easier for you to pause your rest.
Every night you wake up, although it is normal not to notice
The reality is that it is It’s quite normal to wake up at night. During your rest you go through different stages, completing a cycle approximately every 90 minutes.
This speeds up as morning approaches to make it easier for you to wake up. Also your sleep reaches a tipping point around 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. That is, you become lighter. Among other things, drowsiness decreases as melatonin secretion decreases and cortisol levels rise as the body prepares for a new day.
“The night is also marked by brief awakenings,” Alice Gregory, a psychology professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, told The Guardian.
People usually They fall back asleep without realizing it that they were ever awake, he says. “But sometimes, we can become more aware of it, or wake up completely.”
As already mentioned, the reasons for this “fully waking up” can be varied and make it more or less difficult to fall asleep again.
Among them is sleep apnea, a medical condition that should be treated. People with this disorder stop breathing during sleep. “In addition to waking you up, sleep apnea can alter your heart rate and reduce the flow of oxygen to your body,” the medical portal says.
Stress and anxiety threaten during the night
If you suffer from stress for any reason, it is normal for it to come out at that moment of wakefulness when you are most aware.
Loneliness, darkness and the quiet of the night can encourage you to head focuses on everything that worries you, preventing you from sleepingaccording to Greg Murray, a psychology researcher specializing in mood, sleep and the circadian clock.
“Without any of our human skills and social capital, we are left alone in the dark with our thoughts.”
Checking the time won’t help calm your mind enough to fall back asleep either. When you wake up in the middle of the night and realize it’s 3 a.m., the anxiety of losing hours of sleep complicates your goal of falling asleep.
A psychologist explains why you get catastrophic thoughts at 3 a.m.
“As soon as Your brain registers that it is 2 amyou convince yourself that this is your destiny,” sleep consultant Maryanne Taylor tells the British outlet. Such worry loops might keep you up at night in the first place and then allow distressing thoughts to creep into your head.
Therefore, it is best not to check the time. This will help you avoid the temptation of calculating how much sleep time is left before you have to wake up. It usually causes anxiety that prevents you from falling asleep again once you have woken up.
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Tags: Sleep, Healthy Living