As a self-confessed sleep expert, I’ve always been quite lucky that I fall asleep quickly and sleep quite deeply. But over the past few weeks, I’ve been finding myself waking up on my best mattress in the middle of the night and finding it hard to fall back asleep afterwards.
Waking up during the night is a common phenomenon for many people, and it can happen for a number of reasons, from getting up to use the bathroom to light streaming in from your windows.
But recently, I spoke to Martin Seeley, CEO at MattressNextDay who identified three of the most likely reasons that you find yourself waking up at 3am.
1. Your natural sleep cycle
During your night’s rest, your sleep is divided into different stages or cycles. Over the course of the night, you typically go through the different sleep stages up to five times in a cycle – see the 5 sleep stages you need to know about for more details.
Waking up at the end of a sleep cycle is natural and for many, it tends to coincide within the early hours of the morning, like 3am. “Think of it as your body doing a ‘system check’ between cycles,” Seeley explains. “At this point in the night, you’re likely in a lighter stage of sleep which makes it easier for small disturbances – like a noise outside or a shift in body temperature – to wake you up.”
2. Stress disrupting your hormone balance
Stress and anxiety is extremely disruptive to sleep and can often wake you up through the night if you’re feeling particularly stressed. The main reason for stress waking you up around 3am is because this is the time where your body typically undergoes a hormonal shift. The sleep hormone, melatonin starts to decrease while cortisol, the hormone that wakes you up, begins to rise.
Seeley goes on to explain that while this hormonal shift is part of your body’s natural circadian rhythm, “stress can amplify this process. If you’re already dealing with elevated cortisol levels due to stress or worry, this early morning spike can feel like an internal alarm clock going off too soon.”
Another reason that stress could be waking you up is because it impacts how deeply you sleep. As explained above, lighter stages of sleep happen in the early morning so if you’re feeling stressed, this can cause your body to spend less time in the restorative stages of sleep and make you wake up prematurely.
3. Blood sugar levels dropping
Blood sugar regulation is another reason why you might be waking up at 3am. Seeley says this is because “during the night, the body uses stored energy to keep everything running smoothly while you sleep. "But if your blood sugar levels drop too low – perhaps because of what or when you ate during the day – your body releases stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline to stabilise them."
This process is designed to protect your body’s balance but it can also have the unintended side effect of waking you up in the middle of the night. An easy way to avoid this is to be mindful of what you eat before you go to sleep so your blood sugar is stable through the night. See the 8 foods to eat before bed and 4 to avoid.
How to get back to sleep after a 3am wake-up
Waking up at 3am is annoying but it’s even worse when you can’t get back to sleep. I’ve been experiencing this recently, but there are a few techniques you can try to help you fall back asleep quickly.
I’ve tried plenty of breathing exercises for sleep and the 4-7-8 method is extremely effective – and one that experts like Seeley recommend too. Breathing in for four seconds, holding for seven and and breathing out for eight has a relaxing effect and can calm your nervous system.
TikTok sleep hacks can also be surprisingly helpful, like the military sleep method, and even trying not to fall asleep can almost ‘trick’ your brain into drifting off. But most importantly, it’s important to not check your phone or clock when you wake up at night. There’s nothing worse than checking the time and finding you only have an hour of sleep left and this rise in anxiety can make it harder to fall asleep.
