Nocturnal awakenings can be mistaken as shift work disorder. Gastro-intestinal discomfort arising from food that has not been fully cooked, is also a contributor to middle of the night insomnia. Nocturnal awakenings are more common in older patients and have been associated with depressive disorders, chronic pain, obstructive sleep apnea, obesity, alcohol consumption, hypertension, gastroesophageal reflux disease, heart disease, menopause, prostate problems, and bipolar disorders. If interrupted sleep (called "biphasic sleeping" or " bimodal sleep") is perceived as normal and not referred to as "insomnia", less distress is caused and a return to sleep usually occurs after about one hour. Sleep research conducted in the 1990s showed that such waking up during the night may be a natural sleep pattern, rather than a form of insomnia. Excessive daytime sleepiness is reported nearly two times higher by individuals with nocturnal awakenings than by people who sleep through the night. The disrupted sleep patterns caused by middle-of-the-night insomnia make many sufferers of the condition complain of fatigue the following day. This kind of insomnia (sleeplessness) is different from initial or sleep-onset insomnia, which consists of having difficulty falling asleep at the beginning of sleep. Middle-of-the-night insomnia (MOTN) is characterized by having difficulty returning to sleep after waking up during the night or very early in the morning. Sleep maintenance insomnia, Nocturnal awakenings, Middle of the night awakenings, and Middle insomnia. doi:10.1080/ condition Middle-of-the-night insomnia Systematic review of light exposure impact on human circadian rhythm. Interrelationship between sleep and exercise: a systematic review. doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00780ĭolezal BA, Neufeld EV, Boland DM, Martin JL, Cooper CB. Self-regulation of breathing as an adjunctive treatment of insomnia. Effectiveness of progressive muscle relaxation, deep breathing, and guided imagery in promoting psychological and physiological states of relaxation. Toussaint L, Nguyen QA, Roettger C, et al. Perciavalle V, Blandini M, Fecarotta P, et al. If noise is keeping you up, earplugs or a sound machine are other options to consider, while light disturbances can be blocked out with a good set of blackout curtains or a quality eye mask. Seeing what time it is can cause anxiety and keep you from falling back asleep, so if you have regular nighttime awakenings that leave you awake for long periods of time, you may want to consider removing any clocks from your room (or at least keeping them out of your sight). If you’re really struggling to fall back asleep and none of the above has helped, you can try taking a hot bath or diffusing lavender oil in your bedroom, but these should be last resorts, since the act of turning on lights or looking for things to help might in turn wire your brain some more.Īnother thing to avoid is the clock. Lindeman also cautions against turning on a light, eating, drinking, or taking medicine unless you’re in pain (such as being sick with a virus and unable to fall back asleep because of it). “It’s the worst thing you can do because the wavelength of light emitted will bottom out your melatonin levels.” Since blue light and bright light stops melatonin production, which is essential to making you feel sleepy, playing around on your phone or putting on a Netflix show can cue your body further for wakefulness.ĭr. “Don’t open your phone, tablet, or computer,” Dr. The biggest thing to avoid: your cell phone, and then your TV. There’s more on the list of things you should avoid rather than things you should do if you’re wondering how to fall back asleep. In fact, he adds that you may not even remember many of these awakenings happening. “Normal sleep cycles are such that we all enter at least a very shallow phase of wakefulness several times per night.” This can include interludes of getting up to use the bathroom and then going back to sleep. “Everybody wakes up in the middle of the night,” says Philip Lindeman, MD, PhD and a sleep expert with Ghostbed. But waking up in the middle of the night is actually normal. There are few things worse than waking up in the middle of the night, whether from anxiety or another reason, and not being able to fall back asleep. Here’s what sleep experts recommend doing (and avoiding) if you wake up in the middle of the night and need help falling back to sleep. Should you continue tossing and turning and hope for the best, or get out of bed to do something that makes you sleepy again? The best course of action lies somewhere in the middle. You’ve probably been here before: It’s 3 a.m., you’re awake for reasons you can’t explain and now you can’t fall back asleep.
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