{"id":335068,"date":"2025-10-27T02:00:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T02:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/335068\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T02:00:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T02:00:11","slug":"this-may-be-why-you-always-wake-at-3am-and-cant-sleep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/335068\/","title":{"rendered":"This May Be Why You Always Wake At 3AM And Can’t Sleep"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have insomnia<\/a>, but not the kind that means I struggle to fall asleep (in fact, the speed and ease with which I nod off at night put me off seeking help for years). <\/p>\n

Instead, the problem happens in the wee hours of the morning. It reaches roughly 3am, and my body wakes me up \u2013 a common enough process<\/a>, but one which I, for some reason, don\u2019t recover from. <\/p>\n

After the disruption, I stay up for hours, only feeling able to sleep when it\u2019s time to get up and go to work. This persists no matter how much shut-eye I do (or don\u2019t) get, how much exercise I do<\/a>, or how early I go to bed<\/a>. <\/p>\n

If that sounds familiar, you \u2013 like me \u2013 may have something called sleep maintenance insomnia. <\/p>\n

What is sleep maintenance insomnia?<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to Harvard Health<\/a>, the term refers to a lack of sleep that happens not because someone can\u2019t nod off, but because they wake up and can\u2019t fall back asleep. <\/p>\n

In America, it\u2019s believed to affect<\/a> as many as one in five people (and while there doesn\u2019t seem to be much data on the phenomenon in the UK, one in three adults<\/a> here are thought to experience acute insomnia at some point). <\/p>\n

Harvard Health added <\/a>that the condition might be especially common in women during midlife. <\/p>\n

Health problems, family stresses, depression, and even hot flashes might play a role. <\/p>\n

As, they say, can age<\/a>: \u201cas we grow older, the normal sleep cycle becomes shorter, and we spend less time in deep sleep\u201d. <\/p>\n

How can I manage sleep maintenance insomnia?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr Karen Carlson, a doctor who runs classes focusing on women\u2019s sleep quality at Boston\u2019s Massachusetts General Hospital, told Harvard Health<\/a> that going to bed really early to \u201cmake up\u201d for missed sleep might not help. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat sometimes happens is that women are going to bed early trying to sleep and then they wake up at 3 or 4am \u2013 and they\u2019re not really meant to sleep more than six or seven hours, but they\u2019re in bed early trying, and they awaken early.\u201d <\/p>\n

What may help, however, is \u201cclock blocking\u201d, or ignoring any screen which tells you the time, Johns Hopkins shared<\/a>. <\/p>\n

So, too, can getting up out of bed to do <\/a>something screen-free and relatively mindless, like folding laundry after about 20 minutes of being awake \u2015 or, as Johns Hopkins sleep expert Dr Luis F. Buenaver said<\/a>, try to \u201cRead a book, with just enough lights on so that you can see the print comfortably\u201d. <\/p>\n

Try as much as you can to stick to your regular routine the day after a bad night\u2019s sleep, he continued. <\/p>\n

Speak to your doctor if sleep issues persist for weeks and\/or affect your day-to-day life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I have insomnia, but not the kind that means I struggle to fall asleep (in fact, the speed…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":335069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[210,47082,1079,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-335068","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-insomnia","10":"tag-sleep","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115443664627026833","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}