Is Waking Up in the Middle of the Night Normal? Here's What Sleep Doctors Say
Woman waking up in the middle of the night
When you picture the ideal night of sleep, what comes to mind? For many people, it’s (at least) eight blissful hours of uninterrupted snoozing. There’s no sound of snoring in your ear. No anxiety-provoking thoughts about if your kids are safe or if you’re going to meet that work deadline. It’s peaceful—and long.
While a full night of uninterrupted sleep is the goal for many, it’s not uncommon to wake up at least once in the middle of the night. In fact, most people wake up two to three times throughout the night. Is this something to worry about? Here, sleep doctors explain what’s normal and what isn’t. Plus, they give tips on what to do when it happens and you’re struggling to fall back asleep.
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Is Waking Up in the Middle of the Night Normal?
“It’s actually normal to wake up several times per night, but awakenings need to be more than three to five minutes long to be remembered the following day,” says Dr. Audrey Wells, MD, a sleep medicine physician and founder of Super Sleep.
Sleep medicine doctor and Renuma CEO Dr. David Rosen, MD, agrees, saying that most people don’t even remember their brief nighttime wakeups. “Sometimes, [briefly waking up] is part of how our brains cycle into different stages of sleep,” Dr. Rosen says. But he adds that waking up more frequently could be a sign of a sleep disorder like sleep apnea, where you choke in your sleep.
In addition to normal ways of moving into a new sleep stage, there are a whole slew of reasons why someone could wake up during the night. Dr. Wells says that this can include someone you are sharing the bed with moving, noise, having to go to the bathroom, feeling too hot or too cold, getting acid reflux, drinking alcohol (which disrupts the sleep cycle), having an irregular sleep schedule, experiencing pain, medication, untreated depression or having a nightmare. This, she says, is all in addition to possibly having a sleep disorder, as Dr. Rosen previously mentioned.
To sum up what both sleep docs have shared so far, waking up during the night is completely normal and not typically something to worry about. But both doctors say that if you can’t fall back asleep, that’s when it can become an issue.
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What To Do if You Can’t Fall Back To Sleep
Waking up during the night and not being able to fall back asleep can be extremely frustrating and completely wreck how you feel the next day. “Trouble falling back to sleep is most frequently due to what is called psychophysiological insomnia,” Dr. Rosen says.
Dr. Wells explains that some people may have difficulty falling back to sleep if their fight-or-flight nervous system is activated.
“This is the most common form of insomnia and is related to having developed thoughts and behaviors about our sleep that serve to perpetuate insomnia,” Dr. Rosen adds, sharing that habits like worrying in bed or using screens in bed can cause this.
Dr. Rosen warns against using a phone, computer, tablet or watching TV in bed as a way to avoid psychophysiological insomnia. “Our mind has a powerful ability to make associations—both positive and negative—with the bedroom. If the bedroom is a place where you watch stimulating television or worry excessively in bed, then your mind will not consider that space for rest and rejuvenation,” he explains.
If you do wake up and can’t fall back to sleep no matter how hard you try, Dr. Wells says that the best thing you can do is get out of bed. This, she shares, often helps to pull your brain out of a rumination. “Keep the lights low and do something boring in another room for 30 minutes or so. Return to your bed when you feel like there’s a high chance of going back to sleep,” she says.
If you wake up during the night and can’t fall back to sleep regularly, that’s when both doctors say it’s time to see a sleep medicine specialist. A sleep medicine specialist can help diagnose or rule out any underlying medical conditions that may be causing you to wake up at night. They can also make suggestions specific to the reasons that are keeping you awake.
Both Dr. Rosen and Dr. Wells reiterate that it’s completely normal to wake up briefly throughout the night and not something to worry about. It’s only when you can’t fall back asleep and this disruption causes you to feel tired the next day that it’s a problem. Fortunately, sleep doctors are pros at helping people overcome it. Seek one out and you can kiss counting sleep goodbye.
Next up, here's what sleep specialists say what *not* to do if you have trouble sleeping.
Sources
Dr. Audrey Wells, MD, sleep medicine physician and founder of Super Sleep
Dr. David Rosen, MD, sleep medicine doctor and CEO of Renuma
