The surprising reason for waking up at the same time in the middle of the night explained

Waking up several times during the night is a natural phenomenon, often due to sleep architecture, that is, the stages that a person goes through every night.

These awakenings usually last anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes—if they happen too often in one night or sleep disturbances occur, it can become a routine and annoying problem.

Every person goes through four stages of sleep every night, which occur at intervals of about 90 to 120 minutes, says Seattle neurologist Brandon Peters-Matthews.

The cycle begins with light sleep, which progresses to deeper sleep, and then to the deepest sleep, which occurs in the third stage, often called “slow wave.”

During stage four, known as REM sleep, brain activity reaches levels that are almost identical to normal activity during wakefulness.

It is after this stage that people often wake up naturally, and after falling back into sleep, the cycle begins again.

“Because we typically go to bed at about the same time every night, and these cycles are about the same length, we may wake up at the same time at night,” Peters-Matthews explained.

Most of these awakenings are brief and easily forgotten, but “there may be one or two cycles during the night when we wake up, look at the clock and find out what time it is.”

Waking up several times a night usually isn’t harmful as long as you fall back asleep within 5 to 10 minutes, says Michelle Drerup, director of the behavioral sleep medicine program at the Cleveland Clinic.

On the other hand, when people wake up several times within an hour, it can lead to fragmentation of the sleep cycle and the person may not reach the deep sleep stage. And this can already be considered a sign of sleep disorders (sleep apnea or nocturia).

When people naturally wake up at night, they are more likely to remember that it happened in the second half of the night. This is when people typically experience longer periods of REM sleep, and instead experience longer stages of deep sleep in the first half of the night.

According to Peters-Matthews, it is often a person’s emotional reaction to waking up that can create problems and lead to the development of secondary insomnia if the reaction causes prolonged wakefulness. If the first thing you do when you wake up is look at the clock and it begins to depress you, then this is already a problem that does not allow you to “indulge in Morpheus” again.

A person’s circadian rhythm may also play a role, adds neurologist Katie Goldstein. This rhythm tells the body when it’s time to sleep and tends to match your past sleep-wake cycles and light exposure during the day. If this rhythm is disrupted or the sleep-wake cycle changes greatly, the body will not have a clear idea of ​​when to “turn on” quality deep sleep.

“The circadian rhythm is our internal body clock: it measures the time we are awake and the time we are asleep – it synchronizes most of our physiological processes so our body does what it needs to do at the right time of day,” notes Goldstein.

Circadian rhythms and sleep architecture change with age, which may be why some may feel like they slept better when they were younger. According to the expert, as people age, they simply tend to spend more time in the light stages of sleep.

In order to avoid the unpleasant sensations of waking up at night, experts recommend following fairly simple rules. By going to sleep and waking up at the same time every day, as well as getting plenty of natural light during the day and dimming artificial light at night, you can increase your circadian amplitude (the peaks and valleys of your cycle), which will improve your sleep process.

It may also be helpful to take a very low dose of melatonin, no more than half a milligram, a few hours before you naturally drift off to sleep. This will help shift your biological clock a little.

“The most important thing to do when you wake up in the middle of the night is not to look at the clock. If the alarm doesn’t go off, it means it’s not time to wake up yet. It doesn’t matter what time it is. You can roll over, get comfortable and go back to sleep,” Peters-Matthews rightly points out.

If you don’t fall asleep again within 15 minutes, it’s best to get out of bed to avoid associating being awake with your bed. Do some quiet activity that will make you sleepy again.

“Our brains are very associative and can be easily conditioned so that if we stay in bed for a long time and are awake, our brain begins to associate the bed with restlessness and doing things. Getting up and switching to something else can break this association,” recommends Michelle Drerup.

It is important to make sure that your sleep is not disturbed by any external factors: “Optimizing sleep conditions is very important. Sometimes that means keeping pets out of the bedroom and optimizing the noise, light and temperature levels in the room.”

But if waking up is naturally caused by your sleep architecture and doesn’t affect your functioning the next day, there’s nothing to worry about.