If You Always Wake Up Too Early In The Morning, This Could Be Why

From ca.style.yahoo.com

While insomnia is typically thought of as not being able to fall asleep or stay asleep, there is a lesser-known sleep disorder called late insomnia that can be just as frustrating.

“Late insomnia, or early morning awakening, is when you wake up much earlier than you want to and can’t fall back asleep, even though you’re still tired,” Dr. Angela Holliday-Bell, a physician and sleep specialist, told HuffPost.  

While anyone can experience late insomnia, it becomes more likely with age, according to the journal ”Sleep Medicine Clinics.” Sleep doctors say there are a few reasons why late insomnia is more common with age, but the good news is that there is a lot you can do about it.

Why Late Insomnia Is More Common With Age  

Late insomnia isn’t an official medical diagnosis, but Dr. Meredith Broderick, a sleep neurologist and Ozlo medical advisory board member, explained that it describes waking up spontaneously between 1.5 and 2 hours earlier than you plan to. She shared that this isn’t considered a problem if it happens occasionally, but if it occurs at least three times a week for at least three months, it’s considered late insomnia.

There are four major reasons why late insomnia happens and why older adults are most prone to experience it, according to sleep doctors.

1. Circadian rhythm naturally changes as we age  

Dr. William Lu, a sleep doctor and the medical director at Dreem Health, told HuffPost that circadian rhythm changes as we age, which can contribute to late insomnia. “The body’s internal clock shifts with age, causing people to feel sleepy and wake earlier than they used to,” he said. Lu explained that older adults tend to spend less time in deep sleep and more time in lighter stages, making them more prone to waking up early. 

“In addition, melatonin production declines, which can reduce sleep quality,” Lu added. As if that wasn’t enough to cause sleeping problems, Lu shared that sleep apnea is also more common with age, which can also contribute to late insomnia. 

Circadian rhythm changes as we age, which can contribute to late insomnia. DMP via Getty Images

2. Hormonal shifts 

For women, perimenopause and menopause can contribute to sleep disorders, including late insomnia. “In perimenopause and menopause, hormonal shifts — especially declining oestrogen and progesterone — affect the brain’s sleep centre and circadian rhythm. These changes are not just due to hot flashes. These changes can trigger night wakings, especially when combined with elevated cortisol and a dysregulated circadian rhythm, said Dr. Romie Mushtaq, a neurologist, integrative medicine doctor and author of “The Busy Brain Cure.”

Holliday-Bell added to this, saying that lower oestrogen can also lead to lighter, more fragmented sleep. On top of that, she said that many menopausal women experience night sweats and hot flashes that wake them in the early morning hours and make it hard to fall back asleep. 

3. Depression and anxiety

All of the sleep experts told HuffPost that late insomnia is a hallmark symptom of depression, which scientific research backs up. Lu explained that depression can lead to waking up in the early morning because it changes the circadian rhythm and leads to elevated morning cortisol levels.

“Anxiety and stress also contribute by keeping the brain in a hyper-alert state, making it difficult to fall back asleep,” he added.  

4. Alcohol

Mushtaq told HuffPost that the most common reason for late insomnia that she sees (in adults of all ages) is alcohol use. While alcohol may help someone initially fall asleep, a wealth of scientific research shows that it’s associated with sleep disturbances. These sleep interruptions often happen during REM sleep, which occurs in the second half of the night, including the early morning hours.

How To Stop Experiencing Late Insomnia

The first step to overcoming late insomnia is identifying the reason why you are experiencing it, according to sleep experts. Often, this makes the next step pretty logical. For example, if you tend to unwind in the evening with an alcoholic drink, spend the next few weeks going without it and seeing if it makes a difference. If hot flashes are waking you up and you can’t fall back asleep, outfitting your bed with cooling sheets and lowering the temperature are good first steps to take.

Don’t know what the root cause is? Then it’s time to do some detective work. “Start by looking at your habits. Keep a consistent sleep and wake time, create a calming bedtime routine and avoid alcohol, caffeine and bright screens late in the day,” Holliday-Bell recommended. In other words, take a close look at your lifestyle and change anything that isn’t a good sleep hygiene habit.

If you think your mental health is contributing to your late insomnia, all of the sleep experts recommend seeing a therapist who can help you find healthy ways to manage your depression, anxiety or stress so that it doesn’t interfere with your sleep. They all say that asking your primary care provider to refer you to a sleep specialist can be beneficial, too. A sleep specialist can serve as your co-detective, helping you pinpoint the reason why you’re waking up so early and then troubleshooting accordingly.

Though late insomnia isn’t uncommon among older adults, Mushtaq emphasized that it isn’t normal. “Late insomnia isn’t just about aging; it’s often a signal that your stress response is out of sync. Healing starts with calming the brain at night and supporting the body’s natural rhythms. With the right tools, including targeted supplements, we can restore both sleep and sanity,” she said.

If you’re experiencing late insomnia, consider what your body is trying to communicate to you. It may be a self-care alarm bell going off, signalling that one part of your life needs a little extra attention. Once you take action, you’ll sleep more deeply — and longer. 

https://ca.style.yahoo.com/always-wake-too-early-morning-110017191.html 

Your Quest for Perfect Sleep Is Keeping You Awake

From time.com

In a culture that’s highly goal-oriented, yet another form of performance anxiety has emerged: It’s called orthosomnia, and it refers to an unhealthy preoccupation with getting the right amount of sleep as well as the right stages of sleep.

The term was coined in 2017 by researchers who were seeing a growing number of patients seeking treatment for self-diagnosed sleep disturbances based on data provided by their sleep trackers, explains Kelly Baron, a clinical psychologist who leads the behavioural sleep medicine program at the University of Utah and lead researcher on the paper that named the term. “Ortho” means straight or correct, and “somnia” means sleep. The researchers chose this term because of its similarity to a condition called orthorexia, an unhealthy preoccupation with healthy eating. 

Orthosomnia is not an actual medical diagnosis, but it is a phenomenon that has risen alongside the popularity of sleep trackers.

“In a clinical setting, we were seeing more and more people with insomnia coming in with sleep-tracking devices,” explains Baron. “They were believing the device more than their doctor” or even their subjective sense of how they had slept.

After reviewing a series of case studies, she and the other researchers on the paper concluded that some of the people who were unnecessarily concerned about their sleep quality were too caught up in their sleep-tracker data and were on a “perfectionistic quest for the ideal sleep in order to optimize daytime function.”

But many people don’t realize that “trackers are not medical devices—the accuracy is always suspect,” says Michael Breus, a clinical psychologist and founder of SleepDoctor.com. “Sleep is measured by brain waves, so unless you have electrodes attached to your head, you’re not going to have your brain waves measured.” That’s what’s done with polysomnography, a lab-based sleep study that’s considered the gold standard for diagnosing sleep disorders.

By contrast, sleep trackers that are worn on the wrist typically rely on pulse or heart rate “to guesstimate” the brain’s electrical activity during sleep (which an electroencephalogram, or EEG, would reveal in a sleep lab), says Breus. And sleep-tracker rings that are worn on your finger use body temperature, body movement, heart rate, and heart rate variability (fluctuations in the time between heartbeats) to gauge sleep quality.  

Unfortunate side effects of orthosomnia

                                                    Photo-Illustration by Chloe Dowling (Source Images: MirageC/Getty Images, Ljupco/Getty Images)

The trouble with having an unhealthy fixation on sleep metrics is that it can fuel anxiety and exacerbate insomnia in those who have it. People who have orthosomnia may feel nervous about going to sleep, staying asleep, or achieving certain sleep metrics such as deep sleep, REM sleep, sleep latency (how long it takes to fall asleep), or sleep efficiency, the percentage of time you actually spend asleep as opposed to lying in bed. (All of these metrics are included on certain sleep trackers.) As a result, they may end up lying awake longer at night, Baron says.

“Sleep is one of those things you can’t perfect,” Baron says. “Some nights you can do everything right and still not get a good night’s sleep. You can’t over-control it.” 

But that doesn’t stop some people from trying. “People over-focus on everything related to sleep because of the availability of data,” Breus says. And they often share it with other people. “It becomes a point of discussion—what used to be called water-cooler talk,” he adds.

How to control orthosomnia

Rather than obsessing about the minutiae of your sleep, it’s better to think about your goals for improving your shuteye, Breus says: Do you want to sleep longer? Wake up feeling better rested? Something else?

Then, you can use the feedback you get from a sleep tracker to modify your behaviour—including your eating, drinking, and stress-management habits and your use of electronic devices in the evening—to try to set yourself up for a better night’s sleep. “Self-monitoring and goal-setting are cornerstones of any sort of behaviour change,” Baron says.

But there’s no need to check the data from your sleep tracker every day. Instead, it’s better to look for trends or big variations once a week or compare your weekday data to your weekend data, Breus says. “That’s how everybody can utilize a tracker without becoming cuckoo about it.”

To improve your sleep quality, make an effort to get on a regular schedule, with consistent bedtimes and wake-up times, Baron says. In the morning, pay more attention to how you feel than the numbers on your tracker’s app.

If, despite taking these steps, you continue to find yourself obsessing over your sleep data or feeling anxious about your sleep, it may be time to take a break from using a tracker. “For some people, paying too much attention backfires,” Baron says. “How you sleep really should be about how you feel.” 

If you can’t resist monitoring your sleep quality, you may be better off keeping a written sleep diary, says Breus. In the morning, write down your bedtime and wake-up time, how many times you woke up during the night, and how you’d rate your sleep quality on a scale from one to five.

If anxiety about sleep continues to haunt you, you may benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) with a trained therapist, an online course, or an app. CBT-I uses various strategies to change people’s sleep-related habits and attitudes that might be perpetuating their sleep troubles. It’s been shown to be highly effective.

https://time.com/7311740/sleep-anxiety-orthosomnia/