Should I get up or stay in bed when I wake at 3 am?
Get up, if you have been lying awake for about twenty minutes. Staying in bed frustrated teaches the brain that bed is where you lie awake. Sit somewhere dim with something boring until you feel drowsy, then go back. Everyone surfaces between sleep cycles; the problem is not the waking but the failing to fall back.
What helps: no clock-watching, since checking the time spikes alertness; if not asleep in twenty minutes, sit in dim light with something boring until drowsy, then return.
Waking gasping or with a pounding heart, or a bed partner reporting snoring and pauses, points to sleep apnea, which is a different fix entirely.
Source: NHS, insomnia
See a doctor promptly if
- Waking gasping, choking or with a pounding heart, or being told you stop breathing in your sleep
- Waking regularly drenched in sweat, especially with weight loss, fever or new lumps
- Waking breathless when lying flat, or needing extra pillows to breathe comfortably
- Early waking with persistent low mood, loss of interest or hopelessness
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Answered by the AskDoc Medical Team · Medically reviewed under our Medical Director, MBBS · How we review
For light sleepers
Foam earplugs or a steady white noise machine fix more nights than most sleep aids, and cost almost nothing. Worth trying before anything stronger.
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