The 3am Hormone Wake Up Call

I know it's not just me as I have so many clients who struggle with waking up in the night as well. What can I say other than it is beyond frustrating. My current wake time varies between around 2:17am and 3:09am. Yes that sounds very precise, but for some reason you always seem to remember the exact time when it's the middle of the night.

So what should you do at this time? Well we all know what we should be doing (trying to go back to sleep of course), but our brain likes to create some full blown, unrealistic and irrational scenarios whereby all our darkest thoughts that we have suppressed throughout the day seem to come alive and arrive forefront in our thoughts... yaaay! Just what I need at 3am... thoughts of impending doom!

Plus the more frustrated you get with yourself about forcing sleep (which is clearly not working) and suppressing your innermost fears as "this is not the time thanks brain", the more sleep seems to escape us and we start to slowly feel more and more awake.

The reasons why we wake in the night can vary from night to night. For women especially, our luteal phase (the second half of our cycles after ovulation) is known to disrupt sleep. Then there is also good old perimenopause which is just the gift that keeps on giving.

Then there is stress, something we've eaten perhaps or drank before bed, the wrong sleep environment - being too hot or cold, a noisy partner and even a full moon... the list is endless.

So what can we do? How do we entice sleep back to us again and slowly switch off the monkey mind to allow us to drift back off? Well, here are some things I've been doing recently that sometimes help (and of course sometimes not), but they're definitely worth a try...

BREATHING: I get in a comfy position (for me this is on my back, but if you're a face sleeper then this might not work for you), place my hands on my belly and focus on counting my breaths. Inhale for a count of 4 and exhale for a count of 7 or 8. I keep this on repeat until I fully relax (or basically bore myself to sleep with counting).

SUPPLEMENT: Let's try and stop it before it even starts. Taking magnesium around 30 minutes before bedtime can help us get a better night's sleep. Ideally keep it on your bedside table so you don't forget to take it.

LISTEN: We live near a busy road and so I focus on the sounds that I can hear of the occasional car passing by. If there's rain, which in Manchester there usually is, I can focus on the sound of this which just helps to take my mind off the racing thoughts.

SMELL: I keep my Calm Botanical Essence next to my bed and put a couple of drops on my wrists and breathe in the oils. This to be fair has been a game changer as it triggers sleep for me as I use this before bedtime.

GET UP: If I really can't sleep then I will force myself out of bed and go for a little wander around the house (probably a toilet stop too). Do some gentle stretching and almost reset my brain and body and try to start all over again.

MEDITATE: If I'm desperate I might put on a sleep meditation on my headphones but I really try not to reach for my phone if I can help it. The faff of getting headphones out and rummaging through an app to find a meditation tends to wake me up even more. Alternatively, I will take myself somewhere very calming in my mind and create my own little dream.

DON'T FIGHT IT: The final resort is to just not fight it. This is the hardest thing to do I know but just accepting that lying there in the dark in peace and quiet is still resting. Sleep will come and if it doesn't then I will do all I can to focus on an early night the following evening.

The following day after a bad night's sleep, try and get an early night if you can. Avoid caffeine after lunch and alcohol altogether. If you can, get an early (ish) dinner and not eat too much sugar before bedtime. Have a warm bath or shower, a cool room, take your magnesium half an hour before bed and then pray to the sleep gods that tonight will be a better one!

I hope you found this useful. The biggest thing really is to not look at your phone and accept that if sleep doesn't come, we try again tomorrow night. Look after your body and mind during the following day and avoid anything too stimulating so when it's time for bed, you don't have to fight too many things to get to sleep.

Thank you so much for reading,

Emmaline