Why waking up at night is perfectly normal, and how to fall back asleep

If you want to stay asleep throughout the night, there’s one important scientific fact to consider: Pulling that off is impossible. Waking up multiple times during the night, it turns out, is entirely normal.

As you can see in the figure below, we go through numerous 90-minute sleep cycles and wake up between them – at least very briefly. This often happens unconsciously, and we go right back to sleep without even remembering it the next morning.

On top of that, many of us wake up consciously around 4 or 5 am. This also is perfectly normal. It goes back to the Paleolithic ("Old Stone Age") programming of our brains. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors went to sleep when the sun set and got up around sunrise – which was very early in the morning.

That tendency is still encoded in our brains, and it's why we often wake up during those early hours even today. It's also why midnight is called midnight, by the way.

Whenever you consciously wake up during the night and want to fall back asleep, it all comes down to what you do next. Here are three essential tips:

1. Try to avoid bright, overhead lights
   Your brain mistakes light that is bright or comes from above for sunlight. That's why viewing it at night will make it harder for you to fall back asleep. If you need to use the bathroom, try to use dim and lowly set lights instead of bright, overhead ones.

2. Stay away from your smartphone
   Similar to bright, overhead lights, blue light from your smartphone will make it hard to fall back asleep. Also, checking your messages and social media feeds will activate your "alertness system" and deactivate your “calmness system”, which makes falling back asleep even more challenging.

3. Don't stress out over the fact that you're awake
   Whenever you wake up in the very early morning hours, don't get caught up in the fact that you should be sleeping. Recall the figure above and that you've probably had most of the deep sleep you need during the first couple of cycles. Not getting the rest of the night perfect won't matter all that much. Thus, consider that rest of the night as a bonus – and use these tips for falling asleep again.

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Until next week,
Christian