Reasons this might happen include drinking caffeine or alcohol late in the day, a poor sleep environment, a sleep disorder, or another health condition. When you can't get back to sleep quickly, you won't get enough quality sleep to keep you refreshed and healthy.
Keep the bedroom dark and quiet: Environmental disturbances, like noise and light, can wake a person from nighttime sleep. If darkness and quiet are not possible, wearing a sleep mask to block out light and earplugs to block out sound can help.
As you age your body produces lower levels of growth hormone, so you'll likely experience a decrease in slow wave or deep sleep (an especially refreshing part of the sleep cycle). When this happens you produce less melatonin, meaning you'll often experience more fragmented sleep and wake up more often during the night.
If you are waking up at the same time each night or waking up frequently throughout the night and struggling with falling back asleep, it could be due to factors beyond your environment. Waking up frequently at night often occurs alongside physical and mental disorders, and tends to increase with age.
In fact, the average number of awakenings hovers around six times per night. As the body cycles through various stages of sleep, including deep sleep and REM sleep, it dips from shallower to deeper states.
One study of older adults with insomnia found that magnesium supplementation at a dose of 500 milligrams daily for eight weeks helped them fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, reduced nighttime awakenings, and increased their levels of naturally circulating melatonin.
Consider melatonin sleep help for occasional insomnia.
Research shows that a supplement may help people with insomnia fall asleep slightly faster and may have bigger benefits for those with delayed sleep phase syndrome—falling asleep very late and waking up late the next day.
Early wakening is closely associated with depression, as well as difficulty falling asleep at night. Those with depression may switch back and forth between insomnia and hypersomnia during a single period of depression.
Immediately after waking up at night, you can try to fall back to sleep for about 20 more minutes. As you lay in bed, try not to watch the clock or check to see how many more hours of sleep you can get. After 20 to 30 minutes max, you're better off getting out of bed until you're actually sleepy.
In essence, timing is everything. If you plan on using melatonin to help you sleep, it's best to take it two or three hours before your bedtime. On the flip side, if you find yourself unable to sleep in the middle of the night, keep in mind that popping a melatonin at midnight won't necessarily have immediate results.
The third trimester is a time to expect increasing insomnia and night waking. Most women wake up 3 to 5 times a night, usually because of such discomforts as back pain, needing to urinate, leg cramps, heartburn, and fetal movement. Strange dreams are also common in the last few weeks of pregnancy.
This type of middle insomnia can be caused by mental health issues like depression or anxiety, stressful life situations, night terrors, hormones, physical pain, sleep disorders, poorly timed naps, or environmental factors like a room that is too hot, cold, or loud.
Normally, at night time, melatonin levels will naturally increase, and cortisol (our stress hormone), will naturally be lower (than in the mornings). If you are under acute stress, or you have been under chronic stress, you may notice that you tend to wake up between 2-4 am and have difficulty falling back asleep.
Disturbed sleep is common and results from various causes like stress, health conditions, and medications. The hormones melatonin and cortisol regulate our sleep cycle. The rising cortisol levels around 3 AM or 4 AM with emotional sorting by the brain are probable causes why you wake up around the same time every day.
Nighttime (nocturnal) panic attacks can occur with no obvious trigger and awaken you from sleep. As with a daytime panic attack, you may experience sweating, rapid heart rate, trembling, shortness of breath, heavy breathing (hyperventilation), flushing or chills, and a sense of impending doom.
As reviewed above, most sleep parameters decline with age until the age of 60 years, but remain generally unchanged after 60 years of age. Also, older adults are less likely to complain of sleep problems and tend to accept some noticeable sleep alterations as normal changes with aging.
According to their internal body clock, most older adults need to go to sleep around 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. and wake up at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. Many people fight their natural inclination to sleep and choose to go to bed several hours later instead.
By the age of 80, cerebral blood flow is approximately 20% less than at age 30, which means that the heart has less capacity for physical exertion and may feel fatigued more easily. As a result, we feel a gradual decline in our energy and endurance levels.
See, our circadian rhythm directs our cortisol, an awakening hormone, to rise around 3am, in preparation for the next morning. However, if you cortisol levels are already high, which is a consequence of stress, then it's likely you will wake up.
Your sleep patterns
One likely explanation for waking up at the same time each night is that you go to sleep at the same time and then, at the same time each night, you reach a light stage of sleep and wake up. We're also more likely to remember waking up if it's closer to the time we normally get up for the day.