How to fall back asleep in the middle of the night

hey everybody I'm Dr Michael Bruce the sleep doctor one of the top questions that I'm asked almost every day from my patients Believe It or Not isn't how can I fall asleep easier it's more what happens if I wake up in the middle of the night how can I get back to bed so first of all a few things to understand a lot of people turn to me and they say you know what I have a tendency to wake up somewhere between two and three o'clock in the morning turns out that's based on your biology

so when you're falling asleep your core body temperature rises Rises Rises until about 10 30 at night it hits a peak and then it begins to drop that drop is a signal to your brain to release melatonin why is that important here because as your core body temperature keeps dropping at some point it's got to go back up when it starts to go back up you move into a lighter stage of sleep guess what time of night that usually is somewhere between two and three o'clock in the morning so I want you to know and

understand this is biology that's getting to you everybody wakes up at that time just not everybody has difficulty falling back to sleep okay you've got a little bit of difficulty falling back to sleep what are you going to to do about that I can tell you what you shouldn't do first thing you shouldn't do is you shouldn't look at the clock now I know this is going to be a tough thing to do because everybody looks at the clock and then they instantly do the mental math and they say it's three o'clock now I've got

to get up at 6 30 sleep sleep sleep and they try to force themselves to sleep I'm gonna be honest with you sleep it's a lot like love the less you look for it the more it shows up what I mean by that is you can't try to make yourself sleep in fact the best thing that you can possibly do is relax so if you could do me a favor and don't look at the clock I'm not so foolish as to think that that's really going to work with you because almost everybody looks at the

clock so let's talk about a couple other things that are important for you to understand another thing is we've now learned about something called non-sleep deep rest this is where you're lying in a position it's dark it's quiet you're not moving turns out this is a bit rejuvenative it's not exactly like sleep about an hour of that is worth about about 20 minutes of sleep so don't worry if you're lying there and you're still not falling asleep it's okay you're getting some form of Rejuvenation and don't forget we're trying to look at your anxiety here

we don't want the anxiety to increase in the middle of the night we want the natural sleep process to be able to take over the other thing that you really need to understand and this is an important metric is in order to enter into a state of unconsciousness you need a heart rate of 60 or below that becomes very very important especially if you come back from going to the bathroom or you wake up middle of the night and you feel your heart rate is up speaking of going to the bathroom that might not be

the best idea I want to be clear about something if you got to go to the bathroom please go to the bathroom but a lot of people they wake up in the middle of the night and they say well maybe I'll see if I need to pee this really isn't a great idea because remember your heart rate needs to be below 60 so when you go from a lying position to a seated position to a standing position and you walk across your bedroom guess what your heart rate is up so if you don't have to

go to the bathroom don't go now if you get back to bed or you're in bed and you don't want to get up we got to do something to lower that heart rate my favorite technique is called four seven eight breathing and what it does is it actually lowers your heart rate dramatically actually below 60 which is exactly where we want it to be it's quite simple you breathe in for a count of four you hold for a count of seven and you breathe out for a count of eight now I want to be clear

you don't push air in and out really hard this is a gentle breath in filling your lungs holding and then pushing all the air out what this does is it dumps out excess carbon dioxide from your lungs allows fresh air to come in it means your heart doesn't have to work as hard which means it lowers your heart rate that's kind of what we're looking for here so when you wake up in the middle of the night if you don't have to go to the bathroom and hopefully you didn't look at the clock here's what

I want you to do remember there's non-sleep deep breaths so you're still getting some level of Rejuvenation and you can do four seven eight breathing to allow your body to lower its heart rate and eventually get back to sleep now one thing that people say to me say well Dr Bruce what if I do five six seven cycles and I don't fall asleep don't worry remember number one this isn't the only time you've ever stayed up all night long and number two lying there is still some level of Rejuvenation I do want to give people

a few different troubleshooting tips just in case it's going for a little bit long number one if you can avoid it don't get up a lot of people will get up walk around the house maybe move into a different room even turn on a light maybe pull out their phone or read a book I'm really not for that I really think lying in bed as long as it's not too frustrating for you and you're doing that four seven eight breathing is going to be a great idea the other thing to avoid you might find yourself

to think well I'm a little thirsty maybe I should get a drink of water it's probably not necessary what I would rather you do keep a glass of water room temperature by your bed that way you can reach over have a quick drink and in the morning time remember I'm always asking you to drink a lot of water anyway so go ahead when you wake up in the morning and drink that whole thing do me a favor if you want to spend more time with me subscribe to our YouTube channel if you have any further

questions feel free to drop me a note in the comments and if you want to learn more head on over to thesleepdoctor.com this is Dr Michael Bruce the sleep doctor wishing you sweet dreams