A lot of us wake up in the middle of the night, whether it’s from noisy neighbors, a pet, having to go to the bathroom, or some other sleep disruption. While it’s common to wake up and quickly fall asleep again, there’s one thing that could make that harder to do, according to a sleep expert.
It turns out, checking the time is a bad idea because it can trick your brain into thinking you should be alert and that your day has started.
Sleep medicine specialist Dr. Kulijeet K. Gill understands that temptation to look at the clock when you find yourself awake in the middle of the night, but warns that it makes it more difficult to fall back into a restful sleep. She explains that realizing it’s 2 a.m. will “awaken us to a conscious level,” and even worse? It makes the brain more likely to adopt a pattern of waking up at the same time the next night.
Doing the sleep math to figure out how much or how little time you have left to snooze can also bring on stress that increases your heart rate, which makes sleep less restful for the rest of the night. Gill points out that the few seconds of blue light from a digital clock or phone to check the time can slow the production of melatonin and “fragment your sleep long term.” So, what should you do to drift off again? She recommends repeatedly counting down from eight to one while taking deep breaths. If it doesn’t work after four or five rounds, get up and move to a quiet, dark area and do something peaceful, like reading a book.
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