Sleep expert suggests two things to change if you wake up at 3am each day

A sleep expert has revealed two key changes you should make to your routine if you consistently find yourself waking up at 3am. The NHS recommends that adults typically require between seven and nine hours of sleep each night on average. Though some individuals find they require more rest than others.

It said: “However, age, health and personal circumstances affect how much sleep we need, plus some people naturally sleep more than others.” In recent years, multiple surveys have revealed some Britons are battling with sleep issues, with one commissioned last year indicating a third struggle even dropping off. Yet some face a different challenge, waking during the night or in the very early hours of the morning.

Appearing on ITV‘s Tonight programme, sleep clinician from Resmed Joshua Piper advised adjusting one’s sleep pattern, reports the Mirror.

He explained: “I think it’s important to have a fixed wake up time. Get good exposure to, ideally, sunlight but you can also use things like daylight lamps. Having that behaviour on a regular basis, your brain’s very good at patterns, it starts to learn ‘Ah, this is wake up time’.”

Joshua’s remarks come as individuals seek effective methods to achieve sleep, particularly crucial as the days lengthen and the nights become shorter.

Furthermore, Joshua isn’t the sole clinician to discuss what can influence our capacity to fall asleep, with Dr Amir Khan suggesting that our habits can also impact the process.

Sharing a video on his Instagram page, Dr Amir outlined how our toilet habits can impact our capacity to sleep and advised people against taking a “just in case wee” before retiring to bed.

Dr Amir, who has featured numerous times on ITV, said this practice could potentially worsen any bladder issues.

He outlined: “If you’re someone who does a just in case wee just before leaving the house, maybe before a meeting, or before bed, sometimes even twice, this is really important for you.

“It might actually be making your bladder symptoms worse. I see this all the time in clinic, people going again, even when they’ve just been, because it feels safer than risking urgency or waking up in the middle of the night to go.”

He explained that this behaviour could ultimately send incorrect signals to the brain. He said: “Your bladder is a muscle and it works with your nerves to tell your brain when it’s full. Now, normally that signal up to your brain shouldn’t come until your bladder is holding around 300 to 500ml of urine.

“But if you keep emptying it early, you know, those ‘just in case wees’, you start to retrain that system between your bladder and your brain. And over time, your bladder gets used to being emptied at lower volumes.”