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Frequently Wake Up At Night? These Might Be the Reasons!


It’s 3 am and you find yourself in the same familiar situation - instead of sleeping soundly, you’re awake and can’t fall asleep despite all your efforts. Waking up during the night disturbs many people and causes poor quality sleep which affects their mood as well as their physical functioning the next day.

 

Because good and continuous sleep is especially important for our health, it is worth knowing the 5 reasons for these nightly wake ups and the ways to prevent them. If you find that after a few weeks the problem has not been resolved, it is recommended to contact your GP or local sleep lab to see if it’s something that might need to be treated medically.

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1. Frequent urination

While there are people who wake up to go to the bathroom once a night, there are those who need to do this 3-4 times each night. After relieving oneself, it may be difficult to return to a deep sleep causing us to wake up terribly tired. According to Jonathan Steele, director of WaterCures.org, it happens because the body is out of balance due to too much fluid, which puts pressure on the bladder and creates the need to go to the bathroom frequently.

What can be done? To restore the body to balance and help it store fluids instead of needing to release several times throughout the night, Steele recommends drinking a small glass of water with a pinch of raw sea salt dissolved into it. The unprocessed salt causes the cells to absorb the water and keep them inside instead of releasing them. If you don’t suffer from high blood pressure, this tip can help you reduce the number of visits to the bathroom within a few days.

2. Overheating of the body

According to the National Sleep Association (NSF), when our bodies or the room in which we sleep are too hot, our sleep is disturbed and we wake up frequently during the night. When your body feels uncomfortable due to heat, it signals your body to wake up to move and cool down, which explains the unnecessary waking in the middle of the night.

What can be done? To avoid overheating your body, it is recommended to maintain a temperature of 65-70 degrees in your bedroom. In addition, it is important that your bedding is made of cotton, which is pleasant on the skin and breathable and to wear light pajamas or even to sleep in the nude if you have no way to cool the room to the desired temperature.

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3. Drinking alcohol before bedtime

For many years, people thought that drinking a glass of wine or whiskey before bedtime would lead to a better night’s sleep, but now it is known that this is not true. When you consume alcohol before bedtime, it initially has a calming effect on your body, but after a few hours of alcohol being digested in your body, an effect is created that interferes with your sleep. As a result, people who drink before going to bed wake up during the night and find it difficult to go back to sleep or suffer from poor quality sleep.
 
What can be done? The best tip for a good sleep without the effect of alcohol is not to drink alcohol before bedtime. If you are at an event of some sort and do wish to drink alcohol, try to stop a few hours before bedtime to avoid its negative effects. 

 

4. Stress

Stress affects a variety of health areas, including sleep, and it can cause you to wake up frequently when you are hounded by disturbing thoughts. This modern disease affects many of us, so it's no wonder that about a third of people today experience such sleep problems on a nightly basis.
 
What can be done? To lower stress, you can adopt a number of healthy habits that will affect your body and thus your consciousness and thoughts. Meditation and yoga are two great solutions to sleep problems caused by stress because they help focus on breathing and regulating heart rate rather than negative thoughts. Cognitive-behavioral therapy can also help you get rid of unnecessary stress in your life, helping you sleep better without all the unnecessary wake-ups that come from pestering thoughts.

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5. Use of various electronic devices

If you have a habit of staring at a bright screen before bedtime, it probably causes you to wake up during the night. Sleep hormones in our bodies are secreted when we are surrounded by darkness, and the light from screens, both large and small, breaks the balance and causes little secretion of these essential hormones, causing you difficulty in falling asleep, frequent waking up throughout the night, and irregular sleeping.
 
What can be done? Dim or turn off the lights in the room you’re in in the evening, and try to avoid staring at screens an hour before you go to bed. If you have difficulty disconnecting from the screens, dim the light of your phone or tablet and keep them at least 10 inches (30 centimeters) away from your face as not to interfere with the secretion of sleep hormones.
image source: Alyssa L. Miller
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