![]() ![]() “As we age, our sleep tends to be more fragmented and less deep,” says Billings. You could blame the lost sleep on life stress or upcoming bills (which would be true), but our bodies are constantly changing, which can bring unexpected shifts in our sleep quality. You’re agingĪs you age, you might find that falling and staying asleep is more difficult than it used to be. “Most mood disorders such as anxiety and depression impact sleep and can cause insomnia, delay the time it takes to fall asleep and cause lighter sleep,” says Billings. If you struggle with a mental health condition, that can also significantly affect your sleep. Pregnancy can cause sleep disruption due to the effects of the growing fetus, says Billings. If you experience symptoms of sleep apnea, it’s important to see a doctor for treatment, since sleep apnea can be associated with other conditions like an irregular heartbeat, stroke or high blood pressure.Īlso, if you’re pregnant, expect a lot of sleep interruptions. Those gasping moments happen when you wake up to breathe. When you have sleep apnea, there are moments during sleep when your breathing will pause for a brief time as your airway narrows and can close off. ![]() Martha Billings, a sleep specialist at the Sleep Medicine Center at Harborview Medical Center. "It can cause people to wake up snoring and gasping," says Dr. However, in some cases, waking up at night could be a symptom of a serious sleep disorder: Sleep apnea. ![]() Anything from bad heartburn to an itchy rash could jolt you awake from even the deepest sleep. You have a health condition or illness (or you’re pregnant)įrom the common cold to lung disease, many health conditions can interrupt sleep. 6 reasons why you’re waking upĮveryone is different, but health conditions, aging, environment, diet and medications are common reasons that could keep someone from falling asleep after waking up. In fact, it’s normal to wake up during the night, even for the deepest sleepers.īut if you wake up every night hours before your morning alarm and find yourself staring at the ceiling, doomscrolling through the internet, or getting into the triple digits when you’re counting sheep, there could be some bigger reasons why you can’t get back to sleep. to use the bathroom and get a glass of water before falling back asleep - this likely isn’t for you. This would make sense, according to Colin Espie, a professor of sleep medicine at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford, who advocates what he calls “putting the day to rest.” Simply put, this means taking some time before sleep to review the past day’s events and plan ahead to tomorrow’s.If you wake up every night at 3 a.m. He was the author of a 2018 paper which showed that spending five minutes before bed compiling a list of future tasks made a significant difference in how quickly study participants fell asleep – and, he told Newsweek, the same principle should apply to nighttime waking too. “Keeping a notepad by the bedside and writing out everything on your to-do list, as well as any other worries or stressors circulating in your mind, has been shown to help,” Scullin said. Luckily, this means that there’s a fairly simple fix: keep a to-do list. That needn’t be from nightmares about beasts from the dungeon dimensions either: “Scientists have suspected for about a hundred years now that unfinished tasks rest at a heightened level of activation in the brain until they can be completed,” he said. Scullin, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University in Texas, told Newsweek. “Maybe it's possible that some of this reflects waking from anxiety dreams,” Michael K. We need … our brains to understand the only opportunity to sleep will be the usual nighttime.” “Try to keep up with exercise and bright light exposure in the mornings. “You’ll notice that if you’re waking up at the same time every day, that will start to become your regular time,” she explained. “Wake up at the same time every day, and don’t get in bed until you feel sleepy,” advised Stephanie Romiszewski, a sleep physiologist and director of the Sleepyhead Clinic, in .uk. Erratic schedules doomscrolling even a lack of fresh air can muddy our sleep hygiene enough to wake us up in the night. But add a bit of stress and there is a good chance that waking will become a fully self-aware state.”Īnd stress isn’t the only factor that can jolt us awake at 3 am. “When sleep is going well for us, we are simply unaware of these awakenings. “We actually wake up many times each night, and light sleep is more common in the second half of the night,” he wrote. ![]()
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