Sleep Disturbance

Over the last fortnight I have been waking up between 5am and 6am without fail. Falling asleep is no issue and neither is sleep but this should not be occurring when I have had a few drinks and go to bed at 1am in the morning. Does anyone have any thoughts as to how or why this would occur?

 

Maybe you need a new pillow.

 

How effective are the blinds or curtains in your room? As summer approaches it gets light earlier. I find I sleep later if I make sure my room is dark with hardly any light penetrating, or I use a sleep mask if I'm staying in a place with light window shades that don't exclude enough light.

 

Sleep apnea?

 

you said you've had a few drinks. do you have to pee when you wake up?

 

Alcohol can make it harder to stay asleep.

 

It's because of the alcohol. Alcohol depresses your nervous system. When the alcohol wears off you go into a state of rebound which is characterized by hyperarousal. Alcohol and sleep do not mix. It might help put you to sleep, but the quality of sleep you get will not be as good. Furthermore, once the alcohol wears off and you go into that rebound state, it will be hard to fall back to sleep and stay asleep. My sleep quality is never good when I drink before bed. I find I will fall asleep faster and stay asleep for maybe 3-5 hours, but after that I wake up feeling wired and find it hard to go back to sleep, so I end up not getting the amount of restful sleep my body needs to feel rested.

 

^yeah, what they said. I'm never able to get more than 3 or 4 hours of sleep after a few drinks and the qualify of sleep is horrible

 

For me that's because there's lots caffeine in the cola I'm having with my rums or bourbons. Which is just sugar anyway. :d

 

I have had a day of intense labour (moving house). I was super tired and fell asleep with no issue. However, I woke up in the early hours of the morning and could not get back to sleep. Apart from what has been mentioned, does anyone have any other ideas, whether they sound far fetched or not?

 

Well the body has its natural flow of ups and downs in the sleep realm pretty much every hour.

Notice how sometimes you wake up feeling fresh after only 5 hours but other times you wake up fatigued? Well chances are if you're waking up fatigued then you're waking up during your natural sleep cycle.

Now a sleep cycle is roughly 40-45 mins every hour with a 15min window of your body being awake. You want to wake up during this 15 minute period when your body is adjusting to being awake.

Now how do you train yourself to do that? I don't know, but if you wake up early and you feel fresh to go, then get up and get going I feel.

There's also an application on iPhone called sleep cycle. And it is designed so the phone sits under your pillow and it measures your movements throughout the night. Say you set your alarm for 6am well the sleep cycle alarm isn't going to go off at 6am instead it's going to wake you up earlier, when the movements recorded on your phone suggest to the application that you're falling out of deep sleep and should be woken go during this cycle.

The alarm might sound 5min, 10mins... even half an hour earlier than you'd like but the idea behind it is you wake up feeling fresh and ready to go.

I'm not too sure how accurately it works I have used it years ago and I look at the graphs and I'm just a terrible sleeper which I already know, I only get multiple hours of rest a day and I'm not calm when I sleep I kick and I got them jimmidy legs going. =p

It did work though and I had a work colleague who showed me the sleep cycle and she swore by it. She was a shift worker.

Anyhoo if you read into it, it's a legit theory etc. might give that a try?

I think it's one thing people need to do more often actually is get less sleep.

When I was rowing for school, a instructor made a statement to me that's stuck with me for 15 years or more now and it hit hard for me and she said "if you like to sleep for 8hrs a day then when you hit 90 years of age you'd have slept 30 years of your life away."

Well the thought of 8hr sleeps to me is absolutely horrifying to even think of. I don't want to waste my life away feeling sorry for myself in a bed. Gotta get up. Gotta get going. Gotta do fun things today.

 

well in that case...

you know andrew from work? the guy who's always just a little too nice to you? yeah, he's full of shit. he's a sweetheart to your face, but as soon as you're gone, the gloves come off. i'm not completely sure, but i think he's still upset about that time at the company christmas party 3 years ago when you got a little buzzed and were sitting a little too close to janet. he's had a crush on her for pretty much ever, and he's a real jealous type. so anyway, he's decided that he wants to get you fired. so every night, he sneaks into your house and injects cocaine directly into your veins, and then each day he submits an anonymous tip to your boss that you need to be drug tested. luckily, your company doesn't want to pay for drug testing. since you're such a sound sleeper, you never actually feel the injections, but as soon as the coke takes effect, you're wide awake and going back to sleep is not an option anymore.

 

not drinking, going to be earlier, and doing a meditation practice might help you

 

I imagine you holding a drink in your hand and slurring your speech as you say that

 

Thanks for the info but none of it sounds relevant.

 

Does anyone have any relevant information? This issue is still happening.

 

Since my previous comment I have been waking up consistently at around 3am. Any ideas as to what could be causing this would be greatly appreciated.

 

clearly 3am is when your mind likes to think of new ideas for trolling.

 

Look into your diet and eating habits. Look into your exercise habits. Trade your alcoholic drinks for water. Drink more herbal teas especially ginger and turmeric, and green tea. If you're a smoker, how much are you smoking? If you like your caffeine it might be time to have a conversation with yourself about your intake as something as simple as halving it could improve your sleep tenfold.
You should look into eating more foods that encourage the production of melatonin, and also your blood plasma levels of trytophan. Bananas, porridge oats, sweetcorn, rice, ginger, barley, tomatoes, etc. for melatonin production and your trytophans; nuts, pineapples, salmon, turkey, cheese, etc.
You're waking up like this because of a habit or behaviour that needs addressing, in a nutshell. Be that a dietry habit or a lifestyle habit; it's rippling out in your sleep; where our hidden faults and guilty behaviours go unmasked and often catch us unawares.
One thing that helped me all-round in sleep, overall mood and energy levels, was the decision to stop drinking unfiltered tap water.
I've bought a water filter to help with this. After carrying out extensive research and phoning the water board to determine levels of what exactly is in the tap water, I wondered what effect NOT drinking all those by products of our tap water would have. And so, three months ago I bought a filter jug and haven't touched a drop of unfiltered tap water since. I recommend them to everyone; sleep is one area I have noticed particular effectiveness myself, as a light sleeper and like yourself, always used to wake up early hours and not be able to get back to sleep. Could it be possible that the byproducts of tap water are attributed to a host of ailments in the human body; down to the neuro chemicals that regulate sleep? Well, I for one, through direct experience, am beginning to think maybe.
I did plenty of research before making the decision of what filter jug to buy, and the Brita jugs really do stand out, taking the edge over Aqua Optima with more effective filtration and a purer tasting water. You can pick them up for dirt cheap; the one I went for is on offer on Amazon at the moment as a matter of fact.. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0060J3S36/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=psychedelian8-21&camp=1634&creative=6738&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B0060J3S36&linkId=079f7eba594a32842f31f4e12fca09a2 - I paid an extra 7 myself and don't regret a single coin.

Hope something here works for you regardless. Sleep is oh-so important, in ways many of us may not even acknowledge.

 

I have a healthy diet and have had to limit exercise due to this sleeping issue occurring. This issue also started happening once I found motivation to get rid of man boobs. In terms of habit or behavior, I am unsure how this would have anything to do with it when asking for reasons for this happening make the issue occur differently (ie: waking up at 5-6am changed once I made a message about this happening). I am also in between jobs and do not want to be falling asleep on the way to/from and at work.