It can be something occasional or something recurring, but it is something that happens to almost everyone (especially as our age progresses), waking up in the middle of the night. Sometimes it occurs for no apparent reason, although this “apparent reason” can be a night visit to the bathroom.
Waking up in the middle of the night can be usual, but why does it happen? The question is important although it also hides another that many people will have done. It is the one, regardless of the annoyance, it is this loss of sleepworthy sleep.
Sleep interruptions can cause insomnia problems, but can also respond to other stimuli of different kinds. In a recent interview in The avant -gardeSleep Psychologist Roser Gort pointed out some of the factors that can contribute to these inconvenience.
First of all, GORT indicated that sleep interruptions are usually completed a pair of sleep cycles, an important factor since these cycles are linked both with the depth of our dream and with the very function of this.
During each sleep cycle our brain passes through four phases: a REM phase (rapid eye movements); and three phases NO-REM, each deeper than the previous one. The REM phase is the phase in which dreams occur and in which it is easier to interrupt the dream.
During a typical night we cross several cycles but the relative duration of each phase in them changes, as well as the very duration of the cycle: the first cycles will see longer deep phases, while in the final cycles the REM phase will gain prominence. If we generally wake up a couple of cycles, it is logical that we always wake up at the same time.
But let’s go back to the key matter: what are the factors that make us woke up easily.
Stress is one of them. According to Gort, the cortisol (the colloquially called “stress hormone”) tends to accumulate in our body from a certain time of the morning (between two and four) when our stress levels are high. The early appearance of this hormone can make it easier for us to wake up at such hours of the morning.
“Stress can also harm the quality of your dream,” they explain from Sleep Foundation. “Sleep and stress are probably affected by each other, with poor dream impacting your ability to manage stress and stress by impacting your ability to sleep well.”
From the Foundation they also point out how hormones can also play an important role in these contexts. Hormones play a key role in the functioning of circadian rhythms, the “internal clock” that indicates when to sleep and when to remain awake. Hormonal changes, add the foundation, can take you to wake up in the middle of the night. This also implies that events that influence our endocrine system, such as pregnancy, can affect our sleep and vigil cycles.
One of the factors that can affect the continuity of our dream is age. As we become older, our body requires less sleep. This not only affects the total of hours that we sleep at night, it can also increase the probability that we wake up in the middle of the night without apparent reason.
Some sleep problems, such as insomnia or sleep apnea can also be behind our problems to stay asleep. Finally, there are external factors that can also influence our ability to sleep “from the pull”. Factors such as our daily habits or medications that we can be consuming can also make our dream more fragile.
Recovering the dream
Waking up in the middle of the night can be a problem for those who have difficulty falling asleep. Awakening in the middle of the night can mean wasting a valuable sleep time, so some experts have been interested in finding ways to reconcile the dream quickly and effectively.
We can often awaken with the prevailing need to urinate. The problem is that this visit to the bathroom can contribute to reveal us making us more difficult than we reconcile the dream. As Gort explained, it is not so much our bladder that awakens us on such occasions but that when we wake up we realize that we have to release its content. If we want to avoid this we can reduce our fluid intake in the hours before we go to bed.
Avoiding this night walk can help us, but experts suggest a series of tricks to help us recover sleep. The first: not to look at the clock to check the time it is, since this probably generates anxiety and makes our dream difficult.
There are almost as many ways of sleeping as people. Our dream depends on many factors, such as biological, work or social.
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