IT’S 3am, and you’re wide awake. Your brain is racing, rehashing work deadlines, grocery lists, and maybe even that one embarrassing thing you said a decade ago. Sound familiar?
No, you’re not alone. This middle-of-the-night insomnia is so frustratingly common that it practically feels like an unspoken rite of passage in adulthood.
If you’ve ever found yourself doom-scrolling or pacing the kitchen at 4am, only to finally drift off as the sun rises (and your alarm looms), let’s break this down.
Why does it happen? And, more importantly, how do you dodge this sleep thief once and for all?
The science behind your 3am wake-up
Psychologists and sleep experts call this “middle insomnia” or “sleep maintenance insomnia”. Essentially, it’s that cruel inability to fall back asleep after waking up in the dead of night.
According to renowned sleep expert Dr Michael Breus, there’s a biological culprit at play. Speaking to The Washington Post, Breus explained that everyone wakes up between 1 and 3am during natural sleep cycles; it’s wired into our biology.
When we go to sleep, our body temperature drops, tipping us into deeper sleep stages. But come the aforementioned times, your body temperature starts to rise again, transitioning you into a lighter state of sleep.
Most of the time, this brief awakening is like a momentary radar blip; it passes unnoticed.
But sometimes, stress, anxiety, or a hyperactive mind turns this routine biological event into a full-blown insomnia spiral. Your brain kicks into overdrive, obsessing over everything and anything.
Add lifestyle factors like caffeine, late-night screen time, or an irregular sleep pattern, and, bam, you’re staring at the ceiling, willing yourself back to dreamland. Oh, and yes, women are slightly more likely to experience this, thanks to fluctuations in hormones during menstruation, pregnancy, or menopause. Fun, right?
So what can you do about it?
Falling back asleep after your mind starts whirring at 3am can feel impossible, but the good news is that it doesn’t have to be. Here’s how to head off that insomnia spiral and reclaim those precious hours of rest even in the middle of the night.
1. Resist your instincts
Seriously, resist. Do NOT pick up your phone. Ignore the temptation to check Instagram, glance at an email, or Google whether your cough last month was actually something ominous. This isn’t just an arbitrary rule; blue light from screens can suppress melatonin, the hormone your body needs to help you fall back asleep.
You might also feel like getting up to wander around the house or rummage through the fridge, but don’t. Movement raises your heart rate, increasing alertness and making it harder to drift back to sleep.
And the hardest rule of all? Don’t look at the clock. As obvious as it sounds, knowing the time is the fastest way to kick your brain into problem-solving mode (“Oh no, it’s 3.45am; how can I survive with only three hours of sleep?”).
Instead, roll over, close your eyes, and trust that time itself is out of sight, out of mind.
2. Breathe your way to dreamland
You’ve probably heard of the 4-7-8 breathing technique, but if you haven’t tried it, tonight might just be the night. The idea is simple:
● Inhale for 4 seconds.
● Hold your breath for 7 seconds.
● Exhale slowly for 8 seconds. This isn’t just mindfulness fluff; it’s science-backed.
Techniques like this slow your breathing, activate the vagus nerve, and nudge your parasympathetic nervous system (a.k.a. your “rest and digest” system) into action. That shift helps calm racing thoughts and lowers your heart rate, making it easier to fall asleep. 3. Tame your midnight worries We’ve all been there: replaying money worries, work dramas, or even existential dread at 3.23am. Spoiler alert: nighttime catastrophising is a brain trick, and tomorrow, everything probably won’t feel as dire as it does right now.
One proven trick? Meditation. No, you don’t need apps or candles, just a little focus. A body scan meditation can anchor your attention and ease the swirl of overthinking. Start by tensing your toes, then releasing the tension. Work your way up, focusing on one body part at a time.
Or, try cognitive shuffling. Which is basically distracting your brain by imagining random, calming images, bananas, balloons, beaches (in my case, lounging on Lake Como or that money from my possible lotto winnings).
This mimics the wandering randomness of pre-sleep thoughts and can help you slip into that dreamy state sooner.
4. Prep for better sleep
If you’re consistently struggling with middle-of-the-night insomnia, it might be time to revisit your habits. Watch your caffeine intake after lunch.
Keep your sleep environment cool and dark. And build a calming pre-sleep routine, turn off screens, dim the lights, and try a cup of chamomile tea or a warm bath (classic advice, but true for a reason).
Insomnia can affect health in more ways than one. Here are five practices that can help you get a better night’s sleep and make you feel fresh and energetic the next day
Even a few hours of sleep loss at night can leave you feeling frustrated, unproductive, and cranky in the morning. It can also deplete your energy and focus, and affect your overall health.
Shivraj Sharma, Founder and CEO of Wholeleaf, told Moneycontrol, “Chronic insomnia doesn’t just go away on its own. It’s a severe condition that can linger for weeks or even months, and necessitates both medical intervention and occasionally, the right tools.”
How to sleep well
Here are some remedies that can help get a better night’s sleep that your body craves.
How to improve sleep: Two hours prior to bedtime, dim your lights, lower screen brightness, and put away any devices that emit blue light, suggest sleep experts (Image: Pexels)
Stick to a sleep schedule, no exceptions
Consistency is the key to getting quality sleep. Your body’s internal clock is regulated when we go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, which makes it easier to fall asleep and wake up without interruptions. “Your body thrives on routine, and consistent sleep is the single most powerful habit we can adopt to restore both energy and clarity,” Sharma said.
Maintaining the same sleep schedule is crucial, even on the weekends. This is our brain’s way to anticipate rest and significantly reduce those endless restless evenings.
Dim the lights, turn off the screens, set the mood
Your body uses light cues to regulate melatonin, the hormone that signals it is time to sleep. He suggested, “Two hours prior to bedtime, dim your lights, lower screen brightness, and put away any devices that emit blue light. Instead of scrolling, engage in a relaxing ritual like journalling, herbal tea, or gentle stretches.”
Creating a sleep-friendly environment rewires your night-time behaviour and turns your bedroom into a sanctuary rather than a battlefield.
Create pre-sleep rituals
A consistent pre-sleep ritual acts as a signal that it’s time to slow down. This could be as simple as reading a few pages of a book, taking a warm shower, practicing light breathing exercises, or listening to calming music.
“When you repeat the same calming actions every night, your brain begins to associate them with rest, making it easier to transition into sleep naturally,” he added. Over time, this ritual becomes a powerful cue that prepares both your mind and body for deep, uninterrupted sleep.
Reduce stimulants and night-time distractions
Coffee in the afternoon, late-night snacks, and high-intensity evening workouts hamper deep sleep. Your body needs calm to transition naturally into rest. “Replace late caffeine with herbal alternatives, finish meals at least two to three hours before bedtime, and swap evening adrenaline bursts with low-intensity activities like yoga or light stretching. Immediately, you’ll have more restorative cycles of deep sleep and fewer disruptions during the night,” he noted.
Embrace a mindful unwinding practice
Stress is the silent trigger causing insomnia and sleep issues. If your mind is in overdrive, it will not be able to relax. According to Sharma, meditation, deep breathing exercises, or even simple mindfulness practices before bed create a mental “off switch.”
These techniques naturally induce the brain to get into a restful state, which reduces morning grogginess. Consider it as preparing your mind and body for the healing process that sleep offers.
FAQs on Insomnia
1. What is insomnia and why is it serious?
Insomnia is difficulty falling or staying asleep. Chronic insomnia doesn’t just go away on its own; it can last weeks or months, leaving you frustrated, unfocused, low on energy and affecting overall health, often needing medical help and supportive tools.
2. How can a sleep schedule help insomnia?
Going to bed and waking up at the same time every day, including weekends, regulates your body clock. This consistency helps you fall asleep faster, reduce night-time interruptions, and wake up more refreshed and clear-headed.
3. Do lights and screens affect insomnia?
Yes. Bright lights and blue light from screens disrupt melatonin, the sleep hormone. Dimming lights, lowering screen brightness, and putting devices away about 2 hours before bed helps your body recognise it’s time to sleep.
4. What bedtime habits can ease insomnia?
Simple, repeated rituals—like reading a book, a warm shower, light breathing exercises, or calming music—signal your brain to slow down. Over time, these cues help you transition naturally into deeper, uninterrupted sleep.
5. How do lifestyle choices worsen insomnia?
Afternoon coffee, late-night snacks, and intense evening workouts can keep your body alert. Switching to herbal drinks, finishing meals 2–3 hours before bed, and doing gentle activities like yoga supports more restorative, less broken sleep.
Disclaimer: This article, including health and fitness advice, only provides generic information. Don’t treat it as a substitute for qualified medical opinion. Always consult a specialist for specific health diagnosis.
We’re told that sleep is a superpower, making us smarter, healthier and happier. But how much is enough? And is insomnia as bad for us as we think?
"Once, after I did a presentation, someone came up to me and said, ‘I don’t get eight hours of sleep a night. Am I going to die?’” says Prof Russell Foster, head of theSleepand Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford. “And I said, ‘Well, yes, you’re going to die. But, you know, we all die eventually.’”
This exchange is, hopefully, comforting, but it also shouldn’t be too surprising. Over the past decade or so, we’ve been repeatedly told that sleep is everything from a legal performance-enhancer to an actual superpower – and, conversely, that if we don’t get enough shuteye we’re risking anearly start to our eternal slumber. But how bad is a lack of sleep, really? And if weseemto be coping fine on six hours a night, is there a chance we’re still setting ourselves up for problems further down the line?
To start with the bad news: yes, being chronically sleep deprived is pretty bad for us. One sobering and relatively recent discovery is the glymphatic system, a waste-clearance mechanism that flushes “misfolded” proteins like beta-amyloids (found in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease) from the brain during rest. Foster points to data showing that poor sleep during the middle years is a risk factor for dementia in later years, because the brain loses its ability to effectively clear these toxins. “There’s increasing evidence surrounding a lack of sleep’s association with cognitive decline later in life,” says Prof Guy Leschziner, a consultant neurologist who specialises in sleep disorders. “But it’s also associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke. We also know that it impacts a range of other physiological processes, like your immune system, your respiratory system and so on. It even influences how your brain processes pain signals, and makes you more vulnerable to them. Every single system is influenced by sleep in some way.”
It’s important to prioritise sleep.Photograph: Mavocado/Getty Images
The good news? Just because you aren’t getting the commonly recommended seven to eight hours doesn’t necessarily mean you’re at risk. Those numbers are typically based on studies from the UK Biobank, a long-term biomedical database that follows the lives of half a million volunteers to investigate how genetics, lifestyle and environment intersect to cause disease – but that doesn’t mean they’re perfect. “I’m a huge fan of the Biobank, but sometimes it’s difficult to unpick sleep from other causes – like the fatigue caused by other illnesses,” says Foster. “With something like sleep, you can’t just slap an average on it and say that’s what everyone should get.”
So howdoyou know if you’re getting enough sleep for your health? Perhaps surprisingly, the best marker is whether you feel OK on the amount you get. “There are some people who need shorter sleep than others in order to maintain the same level of cognitive, psychological and physiological health, and then there are others who are genetically long sleepers who need much more,” says Leschziner. “If someone’s only sleeping for six hours a night but they’re not tired, they don’t have any cognitive symptoms, and, when given the opportunity to sleep more, they don’t, then that’s a good indicator that you have an underlying genetic short sleep time.”
A bad indicator is that you’re irritable, feeling flat, or over-reliant on caffeine, says Foster. “There’s some really beautiful data on the fact that the tired brain has a tendency to remember negative experiences, but forget positive ones,” he says. “So if you find that you’re depressed and you’re taking a sort of a negative view of the world, that might be an indication you’re not getting one of the most important things for your health. It’s also important to listen to friends, family and colleagues about the way you’re behaving – and of course, if you’re tired and irritable, you’re going to be less inclined to do that. If you’re drinking excess caffeine to fuel the day, that’s really important – especially if you’re delaying sleep onset by drinking it into the afternoon and then using alcohol as a sedative, because sedation isn’t as restorative as real sleep.”
This might be a good time to clarify that insomnia, or being unable to sleep despite wanting to, is a different physiological condition from chronic sleep deprivation, or what happens when you’re burning the candle at both ends.
“The easiest way to see the difference is that if you take somebody who is sleep deprived and you give them a bed during the day, they will fall asleep, whereas people with insomnia won’t,” says Leschziner. “We also know that insomnia and being sleep deprived can have very different impacts on general health. Chronic sleep deprivation is not very good for a range of aspects of your health, whereas for most people with insomnia, a lot of the long-term health effects we associate it with are not necessarily applicable.”
One reason for this is that when researchers track the sleep of people with insomnia, their sleep typically isn’t as short as they think – this is because of a phenomenon called sleep state misperception, where people perceive themselves to have been awake when they’ve actually been asleep. “For the majority of individuals who complain of insomnia, their total sleep time, when we measure it based on their brainwaves, is not that much shorter than the average person,” says Leschziner. “And so while these individuals feel sleep deprived, in most cases they’re not at that much risk of some of the harms that are associated with sleep deprivation.”
This brings us to the shorter term. Here, the news is slightly better – though you should still aim to get to bed early rather than burn the midnight oil. “The current thinking is that memory consolidation seems to happen during slow-wave, or NREM sleep, which dominates the early part of the night – REM sleep is much more about emotional processing,” says Foster. It’s also a good idea to focus on sleep if you’re working on a difficult problem: in a landmark study published in the journal Nature, volunteers working on a complex mathematical task were able to solve it about 60% of the time after a good night’s sleep – compared with groups that remained awake during the day or were sleep deprived at night, who saw a 20% success rate. “Those results tell you that sleep is enormously important for coming up with novel solutions to difficult problems,” says Foster. “It’s really not an indulgence.”
Difficult tasks are easier to complete after a good night’s sleep. Photograph: PeopleImages/Getty Images
“To have a single bad night’s sleep is something that we’ve evolved to do every so often, and the brain has an enormous capacity to compensate for it,” says Leschziner. “Now, obviously, our vigilance declines, and it is a physiologically stressful experience. You might be stressed and more irritable, but in the greater scheme of things, it’s not going to make a huge amount of difference to our health.”
Can you catch up over the weekend? “If you’re oversleeping when you don’t set an alarm, that’s a key sign that you need more sleep, and catch-up sleep is certainly helpful – there’s no question about that,” says Foster. “But it has the downside that if you sleep through the morning light, you’ve lost a key signal that is stabilising your internal clock, which means you’re likely to drift into later sleep patterns.”
Apart from making it more difficult to get up on Monday morning, this tends to destabilise your circadian rhythms. In the short term, it doesn’t really matter what time you get up – but if you do it repeatedly over a long period of time it can come with health consequences. In shift workers, the problem gets worse – if sleep gets destabilised then activating the body’s stress response can be the best way to stay awake, but that can come at the expense of the body’s other systems. “It’s a bit like the gears of an engine,” says Foster. “First gear can be fantastic – it gives you that acceleration you need – but if you keep your engine there you’ll ruin it. In the same way, constantly elevating the stress response means you’re going to have a suppressed immune system.”
One clear takeaway is to try not to overstress about a single night’s bad sleep: even if it leads to a couple more nights of tossing and turning, it’s unlikely to do you much lasting damage. But what about when we’re being deprived of sleep for the slightly longer term – like in the months after we welcome a baby into the house?
“This is a question I’m often asked,” says Leschziner. “And the honest answer is we don’t know, but what we do know is that parenthood is associated with longevity and with better cognitive health later on in life – so it seems that if there is a neurological harm attributable to the sleep deprivation of parenthood, then it’s typically offset by other benefits that parenthood provides. One of the theories as to why that might be the case is because having children enriches our cognitive world and increases our cognitive reserve: and so parenthood might actually be protective of brain health.”
Parenthood is associated with longevity, although it might not seem like it with a newborn. Photograph: Westend61/Getty Images
Really, the best advice is to prioritise sleep: recognise that it’s important, make sure you’re setting enough time aside to get as much as you need to feel well rested, and make the most adjustments you can to your current sleep environment. “If I only did one thing, it would be invest in proper blackout curtains,” says Leschziner. “And if you live in a noisy environment, then consider comfortable earplugs that are designed for sleeping in.”
Finally, there’s at least one good reason to stay up late, even if you shouldn’t make a habit of it. “What some people find is that they can access their executive mode network – which is the set of brain regions that keep us laser-focused – by working late at night, and just ploughing through a project,” says Foster. “So the occasional all-nighter, if you’re doing something that’s highly task-oriented, can be helpful. But don’t do it if you’ve got a difficult social interaction to deal with or you’re driving the next day.”
People with chronic insomnia lie awake cycling through the same nightly bind: another hour staring at the ceiling, or another pill. Harvard Medical School research points to a third option hiding in plain sight
Two decades of clinical trials
At Harvard Medical School, Dr. Sat Bir Singh Khalsa has spent more than two decades running clinical trials, where he tests yoga as a treatment for sleep disorders. Through his role as Director of Yoga Research at the Kundalini Research Institute, he conducts this work within the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Brigham and Women’s Hospital — one of the most rigorous sleep research programs in the country.
His 2021 randomized controlled trial, published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, tested an eight week Kundalini yoga program against an active sleep hygiene comparison in adults with chronic sleep onset insomnia. Yoga produced measurable improvements in sleep efficiency, total sleep time, and insomnia severity. Those gains held at a six month follow-up.
Building on that success, a 2004 study published in Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback tracked chronic insomnia patients through an eight-week daily yoga program that they learned in a single session and then practiced independently at home. Across every key measure, the results were consistent: sleep efficiency improved, total sleep time increased, and participants fell asleep faster.
Why yoga targets insomnia differently
Most sleep medications suppress the nervous system to induce unconsciousness. Yoga works through a different mechanism entirely. Chronic insomnia involves elevated cognitive and physiological arousal. Under chronic stress, cortisol and adrenaline keep the nervous system primed for action even as the body strains to stand down.
Yoga addresses that arousal directly. Controlled breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system, lowering heart rate and reducing cortisol. Held postures build body awareness and interrupt the ruminative thought patterns that delay sleep onset. Where most sleep interventions mask symptoms, Khalsa’s approach targets the underlying causes and the trial results reflected that. Improvements persisted for six months after the intervention ended.
In separate school based research, Khalsa found that adolescents who practiced yoga regularly showed improvements in sleep onset and measurable reductions in stress related symptoms, evidence that the physiological effects extend across age groups, not just clinical insomnia populations.
Among the specific practices Khalsa’s protocols use, pranayama — controlled breathing — consistently appears as a core component. The technique involves deliberate regulation of breath rate and depth, and in doing so directly influences the autonomic nervous system. In clinical settings, participants learned it in a single session and then practiced independently at home.
Beyond breathwork, bridge pose — a gentle backbend performed lying down — features in several Kundalini yoga sleep protocols. The posture encourages diaphragmatic breathing and parasympathetic activation, the physiological state the body needs to transition into sleep.
Where the evidence stops
Khalsa’s trials compared yoga to sleep hygiene and relaxation practices, not to pharmaceutical sleep aids directly. As a result, the claim that yoga outperforms sleeping pills is not supported by his published work. What the research does establish, however, is that a self-administered, low cost yoga practice produces clinically meaningful improvements in chronic insomnia that persist over time, without the dependency risks or next day cognitive effects associated with sedative hypnotics.
Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia remains the clinical standard of care. Yet Khalsa pairs yoga with CBT in several protocols, where the two approaches reinforce each other, yoga reducing physiological arousal while CBT targets the thought patterns that sustain it.
Participants learned the practice in a single session, then followed it daily for eight weeks, and still showed improvements six months after the trial ended. A sedative addresses one night. A practice that rewires the nervous system’s response to sleep addresses every night that follows.
Sleep tracking devices can worsen anxiety in people with insomnia by increasing their focus on sleep quality, according to a new study.
Sleep tracking apps can cause stress for people with insomnia as they heighten awareness of sleep quality and monitoring, according to a new study.
Researchers from the University of Bergen in Norway found that while providing insights into sleep habits helped some users, those with insomnia experienced more negative effects.
“The rapid development of sleep app technology requires the scientific community to keep up with technological advances,” said Håkon Lundekvam Berge, first author of the study at the University of Bergen.
He added that the research found that younger adults were more affected by the apps’ feedback, and they reported more perceived benefits but also more worries and stress.
Sleep tracking has become a booming industry. The US sleep-tracking devices market generated about $5 billion (about €4.25 billion) in 2023 and is expected to double in revenue by 2030, according to market research firm Grand View Research.
Most apps rely on sensors embedded in wearable devices such as smartwatches and fitness bands, which track and report parameters such as sleep latency, sleep duration, and sleep efficiency.
The researchers surveyed over a thousand people in Norway, with an average age of 50. Participants were asked about the use of sleep apps, their current sleep health, and whether they experienced specific positive or negative effects.
The authors noted that age was the most influential factor in shaping users’ experiences. Younger age groups aged 18-35 and 36- 50 were more likely to report beneficial effects, such as improved sleep and a greater tendency to prioritise it.
However, the same age group also reported higher levels of stress and concern, suggesting that they may be more susceptible to the negative effects of digital health information.
Copyright Cleared/Canva
The risk for bad sleepers
The authors warned that an excessive focus on the app’s output can worsen sleep quality.
“We also found that people with insomnia symptoms were more susceptible to negative effects,” said Karl Erik Lundekvam, second author of the study.
He noted that feedback from the sleep apps was more likely to cause stress and worry in this group. People who suffer from insomnia often exhibit increased sleep-related attentional bias and worry, which monitoring devices can amplify.
“We would urge people who get more stressed by using sleep apps to learn more about which measures they use and how accurate they are,” Lundekvam said.
“If this does not calm your worries, you should consider taking off your sleep app device during night-time or turning off notifications”, he added.
The authors noted that users can rely on the feedback as motivation to create helpful sleeping habits, such as minimising screen time before bedtime.
