Are you waking earlier that you wish? When the clocks the change or the summer arrives, it can make the mornings lighter again and this can cause you to wake earlier than you wish. Even with good, dark curtains, we can find ourselves waking early too. Some really suffer with early morning awakenings consistently, no matter the weather or time of year.
In this blog post, Dr Lindsay Browning discusses what affects our ability to sleep longer and through to our preferred wake up time, as well as the causes of early morning awakenings and how to overcome them, with a little help.
Why do we sometimes wake up early at around 3am, for example?
And, why is it then hard to fall back to sleep?
One very common reason that people notice themselves waking up very early in the morning, for example at around 3 am, is because waking briefly during the night is a normal part of sleep. Everyone tends to become briefly aware of their surroundings between sleep cycles, but most of the time we don’t remember any of these awakenings because they are so short. If this natural arousal happens at about 3am, it can feel more noticeable because by that point you’ve already had several hours of sleep, so your sleep pressure will have reduced. Less sleep pressure means it can be harder to fall straight back to sleep again.
Very early in the morning, your body is actually already starting to prepare for morning, with cortisol levels gradually starting to rise, which can also make it even easier to realise you are awake and make it harder to drift straight back to sleep.
How does insomnia impact our ability to sleep for longer in the morning?
Insomnia is a sleep condition that is defined not only by having trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, but also waking up too early and being unable to get back to sleep again. Overall, this will affect the amount of quality sleep you are getting day-to-day.
Although a few early mornings aren’t going to be an issue for most, insomnia can be experienced over a prolonged period of time and the resulting cumulative sleep loss, added to shallower, fragmented and lower-quality sleep, will have a knock-on effect on a person’s mental and physical health.
Frustratingly, as you start to worry about your poor sleep, this increased anxiety can lead to more sleep issues and even worse sleep.
What should we do if we wake early?
One of the biggest mistakes people make, when they wake up at to early in the morning is to check the time. If you look at the clock as soon as you’ve woken up and see that it’s 3am in the morning, you will likely start making mental calculations of how long you’ve slept for and how long it is until morning, adding to any anxiety about not sleeping. Also, if your brain starts thinking that you need to check the time, this can make you wake up more fully, whereas if you are not focused on checking the time, you may simply drift back to sleep again without remembering that you woke up.
A great way to reduce this is to simply turn your clock away from you during the night so that you can’t see it from the bed. Set your alarm clock for the morning and, if you wake up in the night, you don’t need to know what time it is. You simply need to listen for your alarm clock and, if it’s not sounding, then it’s not morning yet and you can simply go back to sleep again.
Remember that waking up in the night is not a catastrophe for your sleep.
Stay calm and tell yourself that brief wakings are a normal part of sleep, avoid clock watching, and give yourself a chance to gently fall back to sleep again rather than thinking of it as a problem that needs solving.
What can we do to help us for longer?
There are a number of ways that can help to ensure you sleep for longer. It often starts with activities the day before. Here are 7 tips for you to try.
Increase your exercise levels
As well as being essential for overall health, exercise directly impacts your need for “deep sleep”, throughout the night. If you increase your daytime exercise, you are likely to increase your deep sleep at night. Deep sleep helps you to feel refreshed when you wake up and helps with sleep continuity.
Make sure that you exercise during the daytime, however, and not too close to bedtime, as exercise in the evening can sometimes be disruptive to sleep, due to the release of endorphins and adrenaline.
Stop your caffeine intake at 2pm
Caffeine is a stimulant and makes it harder for you to fall asleep, or fall back to sleep after waking. Importantly, caffeine has an average half life of 5-7 hours. That means that 5-7 hours after your last cup of coffee, half of the caffeine is still in your system! Caffeine is not only found in tea and coffee, but also in chocolate and in soft drinks, such as cola and energy drinks, including the sugar-free variety. If you have trouble staying asleep, then it is recommended for you to have your last cup of caffeine of the day no later than around 2pm.
Try a night time digital detox
A 2021 study found that 1 in 5 people are kept awake by their phones. You can also be woken up by your phone – with notifications and various bleeps and the light coming on.
Smartphones emit blue light which is similar to daylight and this tricks the brain into thinking it is day time, even in the evening or at night, which can make it difficult to transition into sleep mode when bedtime rolls around. Try reading a book or meditating before you sleep instead of looking at something on your phone.
Those who are having an issue with stress should also avoid looking at a phone because there could be content there which feeds anxieties, such as a work email, a social media post or an upsetting news story, which you can wake up thinking about. Try and get into the habit of not using your phone for at least an hour before bed and not looking at it if you do wake early.
Don’t lie in bed for long periods if you can’t sleep
If you can’t sleep, then lying still in bed trying to sleep is one of the worst things you can do. The longer you lie in bed trying to sleep and clock watching, paradoxically, the more anxious you are likely to get about not getting back to sleep.
It is much better to read or to get out of bed and do something else for a while. However, resist reaching for your phone.
If you wake an hour or so earlier than you need to occasionally, you may consider getting up and starting your day. You may feel tired later in the morning or afternoon, but resist taking a nap, instead go to bed at your usual bedtime…and you are likely to sleep until your normal wake time the next day.
Cut your alcohol consumption
If you are waking early or unable to sleep, it may be tempting to try a ‘nightcap’.
Although it is true that alcohol is a sedative and can help with falling asleep, as the alcohol is metabolised, it promotes wakefulness in the latter half of the night – meaning that you wake frequently in the early hours, leading to a poorer quality night’s sleep.
Research has also found that alcohol consumption increases the body’s production of cortisol, not only while the person is intoxicated, but also when the drinker is withdrawing from the effects of intoxication.
This means the alcohol could be a key cause of your sleeplessness the next day too.
Make sure you have good quality curtains
If your curtains are thin or poorly fitted, they can let in sunlight into the bedroom. If we are exposed to sunlight in the early morning, before our usual morning alarm, it makes it much harder to fall back to sleep again. When it is dark, we produce a sleep promoting hormone called melatonin. When we are exposed to bright light, we suppress the production of this hormone.
You could use an eye mask if you can not change your curtains to keep the bright morning sun from your eyes.
Address your stresses throughout the day
As our daily lives are so busy, many of us don’t get to think about the things that cause us stress. We go to bed late after a long day, sleep because we are exhausted, but then wake early, and it is then whilst we lay in the quiet of our bedroom that we start to think about the previous day or what lays ahead, and stress and anxieties flood our brain making it impossible to get back to sleep.
Making time in the day to write down what is worrying you or what is on your mind, in a journal or notebook, will help you to sleep better as you are forcing your brain to process those thoughts long before bed.
What’s worse is that stress can lead to sleep issues…then the lack of sleep can lead to more stress, which ends up leaving you in a vicious cycle, unless action is taken.
Check out this Sleep Expert’s guide to getting back to sleep at 3am, including my contributions and recommendations:
Stress and the impact on how long we stay sleep
Following that last tip, I wanted to talk a little more about stress and sleep.
It is National Stress Awareness Day on November 2nd each year and we also have a Stress Awareness Month every April. As a sleep expert, raising awareness of not only the signs and symptoms of stress, but also its effect on sleep is very important to me. Waking up early and then worrying about the day ahead is a common occurrence when you are stressed about something in your life or at work.
Stress can also make it harder to get to sleep.
Let me explain with ‘the science bit’ …the way the body reacts to a stressful situation or a state of stress is that the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis will signal the adrenal glands to produce steroid hormones, called glucocorticoids, two of which are cortisol and adrenaline. Both of these are “designed” to keep you awake.
As well as these hormones, the HPA axis also helps coordinate your sleep cycles. This means when it is preoccupied with sending signals for the production of cortisol and adrenaline, it isn’t focusing on sleep. When the HPA axis is disrupted through stress, this can result in insomnia and other sleep disturbances, which affects your ability to sleep longer.
What’s worse is that stress can lead to sleep issues…then the lack of sleep can lead to more stress, which ends up leaving you in a vicious cycle, unless action is taken.
Helping you to sleep longer
As covered above, there are lots of reasons why you could be waking early – from caffeine to alcohol, to lack of exercise or stress. Working with me often involves keeping a sleep diary, as well as exploring what can be the cause of your sleep issues, so we can really assess how often you are waking early and why.
If you are suffering with early morning awakening, do book a consultation call.