Waking up in the middle of the night (every 2 hours) | sleep consultant (2023)

FAQs

Why do I keep waking up every 2 hours at night? ›

Reasons this might happen include drinking caffeine or alcohol late in the day, a poor sleep environment, a sleep disorder, or another health condition. When you can't get back to sleep quickly, you won't get enough quality sleep to keep you refreshed and healthy.

If you wake up at 3 a.m. or another time and can't fall right back asleep, it may be for several reasons. These include lighter sleep cycles, stress, or underlying health conditions. Your 3 a.m. awakenings may occur infrequently and be nothing serious, but regular nights like this could be a sign of insomnia.

The real reasons that baby is waking every 2-3 hours at this age: Regression overlap, sleep crutches/associations, changing environments. Another reason your five to twelve month old baby may be waking up every 2-3 hours at night is due to him or her being overtired from the previous day.

Normally, at night time, melatonin levels will naturally increase, and cortisol (our stress hormone), will naturally be lower (than in the mornings). If you are under acute stress, or you have been under chronic stress, you may notice that you tend to wake up between 2-4 am and have difficulty falling back asleep.

What organ makes you wake up at 2am? –– the hours between 1 am- 3 am are prime time for liver function. Our liver is responsible for the smooth flow of qi (in Eastern medicine, that essentially means our energy) and blood production in the body.

Anxiety or depression

Stress can make it hard to get to sleep in the first place (that's called sleep-onset insomnia). But anxiety can also cause you to wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble getting back to sleep (called middle insomnia, or sleep-maintenance insomnia).

Most of us wake up three to four times during the night for varied reasons, and this is considered a part of a normal sleep pattern. However, a lot of us wake more frequently, sometimes even every two to three hours in the night.

Why do I wake up in the middle of the night with a burst of energy? ›

Meir Kryger, MD, an expert in sleep disorders at Yale Medicine, says that "being tired in the daytime and energetic at night is usually caused by circadian rhythm abnormalities," explaining that it means that "a person's body clock runs late and they have a burst of energy in the evening." He says that people often ...

Sleep apnea is a common cause of waking in the middle of the night. It causes shallow breathing, which may cause a person to wake up several times per night. In many cases, a person will not even realize that their sleep is interrupted. A person with sleep apnea may notice symptoms such as: headaches in the morning.

Not only can magnesium help you get to sleep, but it plays a part in helping you achieve deep and restful sleep as well. In one study, older adults were given 500 mg of magnesium or a placebo. Overall, the magnesium group had better quality of sleep.

Depression and Insomnia

Early wakening is closely associated with depression, as well as difficulty falling asleep at night. Those with depression may switch back and forth between insomnia and hypersomnia during a single period of depression.

Share on Pinterest Researchers say interrupted sleep is more likely to lead to poor mood than lack of sleep. Published in the journal Sleep, the study found that people whose sleep was frequently interrupted for 3 consecutive nights reported significantly worse mood than those who had less sleep due to later bedtimes.

Insomnia, the inability to get to sleep or sleep well at night, can be caused by stress, jet lag, a health condition, the medications you take, or even the amount of coffee you drink. Insomnia can also be caused by other sleep disorders or mood disorders such as anxiety and depression.

Why do I keep waking up at 12am and 3am? ›

You wake up at 3am because this is the time you shift from a deep sleep into a lighter sleep. If you turn in at 11pm, by three in the morning you're mostly out of deep sleep and shifting into longer periods of lighter sleep, known as REM.

Middle insomnia describes a difficulty maintaining sleep after initial sleep onset. For these individuals, sleep is fragmented with frequent awakenings at night. Middle insomnia is commonly associated with neurological syndromes (e.g., RLS), pain syndromes, or depression.

Your body likely produces enough melatonin for its general needs. However, evidence suggests that melatonin supplements promote sleep and are safe for short-term use. Melatonin can be used to treat delayed sleep phase and circadian rhythm sleep disorders in the blind and provide some insomnia relief.

1-3am is the time of the Liver and a time when the body should be alseep. During this time, toxins are released from the body and fresh new blood is made. If you find yourself waking during this time, you could have too much yang energy or problems with your liver or detoxification pathways.

“Early to bed, early to rise makes a [wo]man healthy, wealthy and wise.” – Ben Franklin. You've heard it said a million times before: the early bird catches the worm, and in the opinion of many highly successful people, the phrase is much more than a cliche.

So if you wake up at 3 AM, when Liver energy peaks, you may be suffering from Liver Qi stagnation, which could be related to an unhealthy diet, excess alcohol consumption, unresolved anger or high levels of stress.

It's readily available, and it's supposed to help you sleep . . . right? Sleep deprivation can make this logic seem sound, but experts say taking melatonin in the middle of the night can actually make your sleep schedule even worse.

What is the best time to take 3 a.m. melatonin? The best time to take 3 a.m. melatonin is whenever you wake up in the middle of the night and have a difficult time going back to sleep. † For best results, take at least 3 hours before waking.

The hours between 1am and 3am are governed by the liver meridian. Emotionally it is associated with anger and physically associated with your shoulder. The hours between 3am and 5am are governed by the lung meridian.

Nighttime (nocturnal) panic attacks can occur with no obvious trigger and awaken you from sleep. As with a daytime panic attack, you may experience sweating, rapid heart rate, trembling, shortness of breath, heavy breathing (hyperventilation), flushing or chills, and a sense of impending doom.

What health conditions cause insomnia? ›

Examples of conditions linked with insomnia include chronic pain, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, asthma, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), overactive thyroid, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. Sleep-related disorders.

Circadian rhythm disorders, also known as sleep-wake cycle disorders, are problems that occur when your body's internal clock, which tells you when it's time to sleep or wake, is out of sync with your environment. Your internal clock, called a circadian clock, cycles about every 24 hours.

One reason why you may be waking up at 3am is because your sleep is disrupted during light sleep. It could be that your sleep cycle happens to enter this stage of sleep around 3am each night, and something that didn't disturb your sleep during other sleep stages could be disturbing you during light sleep.

Melatonin is generally safe for most people, and many people won't experience major complications when taking too much. Even so, an overdose can cause unpleasant side effects. Keep your dose to no more than 1 to 3 mg per night.

The optic nerve in your eyes senses the morning light. Then the SCN triggers the release of cortisol and other hormones to help you wake up.

You probably know the feeling all too well — grogginess that seems to weigh you down when you wake from sleep. That heavy feeling right after you wake up is called sleep inertia. You feel tired, maybe a little disoriented, and not quite fully ready to hit the ground running. It can affect anyone.

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA)

It occurs when the soft tissues in your throat relax, which can close your airway and cause a temporarily stop to breathing (apneic episode). The result is usually an abrupt disturbance to sleep or an actual awakening, often accompanied by gasping or choking.

Sleep regressions can occur at any age, including 4 months, 6 months, 8 months, 18 months and 2 years. The 12-month sleep regression occurs at or near baby's first birthday, though some children begin regressing at 10 or 11 months.

Sleep regressions typically last anywhere from two to four weeks, and, while they are common, not every baby will have a sleep regression at this time.

Why does my 5 month old not sleep through the night anymore? ›

Sleep tends to be disrupted during this time as your baby is distracted by physical discomfort, such as teething, or neurological leaps such as learning to roll, pull up or walk. Both these things distract your little one from relaxing down into sleep.

If your baby is waking every 2-3 hours overnight and easily goes back to sleep with a feeding, hunger is the likely cause. A gradual calorie rebalance should occur to shift extra nighttime feedings back into the day.

Between 4-6 months your baby may start waking more in the night for milk, genuinely hungry, even if they can self-settle and had previously been sleeping through the night.

Every baby is different. But experts say that, on average, it takes about three to seven days to achieve successful sleep training results. The key to succeeding in a week is consistency. Your baby won't learn to fall asleep and stay asleep on their own after only seven days if you do not keep trying night after night.

Around 4 months, your baby will likely start waking every 2 hours at night because their sleep cycles there have matured as well. Your baby's night sleep becomes more like an adult's, with sleep cycles that are approximately 2 hours long.

Although it is normal for babies to wake during the night, waking every 2 hours is excessive even for newborns, and if your baby is over four months and waking every two hours or more, it is most likely that they have some external association with falling asleep, which now have a direct impact on how to link sleep ...

Why Do I Wake Up at the Same Time Each Night? A variety of factors could cause a person to wake up each night when they would prefer to be asleep. These factors might intersect with natural bodily rhythms, such as your circadian rhythm or sleep cycle, to make waking up at a specific time more likely.

Parasomnias are disruptive sleep-related disorders. Abnormal movements, talk, emotions and actions happen while you're sleeping although your bed partner might think you're awake. Examples include sleep terrors, sleepwalking, nightmare disorder, sleep-related eating disorder and sleep paralysis.

People whose sleep is disrupted by waking up at 3 a.m. can try following healthy sleep tips to sleep through the night more consistently. Avoid caffeine and alcohol: Both caffeine and alcohol are associated with disrupted sleep, especially when they are consumed later in the day.

Can anxiety cause you to wake up in the middle of the night? ›

Nighttime (nocturnal) panic attacks can occur with no obvious trigger and awaken you from sleep. As with a daytime panic attack, you may experience sweating, rapid heart rate, trembling, shortness of breath, heavy breathing (hyperventilation), flushing or chills, and a sense of impending doom.

In our study population, children with sleep terror had lower vi- tamin D levels than the control group. This suggests that chil- dren with sleep terror should be assessed in terms of vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency.

Parasomnia is typically treated by a sleep medicine specialist who also has extensive training in neurology. A physician who is board-certified in both sleep medicine and neurology has demonstrated their expertise in both fields by passing rigorous exams and is most qualified to treat these disorders and conditions.

Medicines such as beta-blockers, statins, selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors and nicotine replacement therapies have been associated with various parasomnias.

The benzodiazepine medications approved for insomnia treatment in the United States are estazolam, flurazepam, quazepam, temazepam, and triazolam (table 6).

However, the FDA has approved only one drug for middle-of-the-night insomnia, Intermezzo (zolpidem tartrate). Intermezzo is taken when you wake up at night to help you fall back asleep.

Medications for middle-of-the-night insomnia

benzodiazepines, such as estazolam and quazepam. benzodiazepine receptor agonists, such as zolpidem and eszopiclone. melatonin agonists, including ramelteon. antidepressants, such as trazodone and mirtazapine.