Stop Waking Up In The Middle Of The Night (10 Hacks)

Are you waking up during the night?

Do you feel tired in the morning?

Is it difficult for you to fall asleep?

I’m going to give you 10 hacks you can implement tonight to stop waking up during the night and have a restful quality sleep – so you can recharge and conquer the day.

Hack #1

Stop drinking coffee 6-10 hours before bedtime.

Here is how caffeine works in your brain:

Once you introduce caffeine, it replaces adenosine (the energy molecule) in the receptors tricking the brain into thinking it has more energy.

Drinking coffee in the evening will impact your overall sleep quality and REM. Leaving you feeling sluggish in the morning.

If you drink your coffee close to your bedtime, you will have a hard time falling asleep. Not only that, but you will experience disturbances and you’ll be waking up a lot.

One study also found that caffeine can delay the timing of your body clock. These effects will reduce your total sleep time.

The dosage of caffeine goes hand-in-hand with timing. You should limit your caffeine consumption to no more than about 300 mg to 400 mg per day.

Hack #2

Eat your last big meal 2-3 hours before bedtime.

Meal timings impact your sleep quality. If you eat a big meal close to your bedtime, you won’t sleep well and you’re going to be waking up during the night.

Eating requires energy. And energy is needed when you’re sleeping (tissue repair, storage of memories, and overall function). The energy can go two ways. Repair or digestion.

When you eat a large meal, your energy goes to digestion first. If you feel hungry, you can have a small snack that contains protein + carbs to ensure you have stable blood sugar levels (that is also a reason why you wake up in the middle of the night – you are hungry and your liver needs glucose).

Eat your dinner full of protein, carbs, and fats 2-3h hours before bedtime to ensure your body has enough time to digest the food. If you want to speed up this process, go for a quick post-meal 10-15 minute walk.

Make sure you’re eating enough iron. Research shows that iron deficiency causes sleep-related movement disorders such as RSD (restless leg disorder). If you’ve ever woken up from painful legs or arms, that’s RSD. Eating iron-rich food such as leafy greens and beef ensures you are not deficient.

Only supplement if your blood markers tell you so.

Hack #3

Keep your room temperature around 17-20°C.

The body’s process of regulating temperature is linked to the circadian rhythm — a drop in body temperature is a signal for sleep. The opposite is true, too. Rising body temperature is associated with arousal or awakening.

By keeping your bedroom colder, you’re setting up your body’s natural systems to function properly, which means better sleep and no “wake-ups” during the night.

How to cool down your bedroom? And keep your body temperature low as well?

• Invest in the proper bedding – breathable lightweight linens that are made with cooling materials.

• Get yourself a high-quality mattress with cooling materials.

• Keep the window open.

• Sleep in cool pajamas or naked.

• Turn on your AC or invest in a fan.

• During the day, have your shades closed – to ensure your bedroom is not heating up during the day.

• Take a hot shower – 1-2 hours before bedtime will help you lower your core body temperature.

Hack #4

No liquids 2-4 hours before bed.

If you’re flooding your body with extra fluids close to your bedtime, you’re going to experience unwanted trips to the bathroom in the middle of the day.

If you are thirsty, it’s an indicator that you haven’t been drinking enough water during the day. You want to hydrate as much as you can right after you wake up, during noon, and stop a couple of hours before you go to bed.

You can experiment with the timing. In the beginning, start by stopping drinking water 2 hours before bedtime. If you are still waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, increase the time.

Hack #5

Avoid screens before bedtime (1-2 hours).

Blue light is a portion of the visible light spectrum that can influence alertness, hormone production, and sleep cycles. It suppresses the body’s release of melatonin. Thanks to melatonin we know that it’s time to go to bed (because we feel tired and drowsy).

If we suppress it by simply looking at our screens, it will be difficult to fall asleep and you’re going to be waking up in the middle of the night.

Make sure you stop looking at your screens 1-2 hours before bedtime. If you are reading on a Kindle or iPad (or your phone), lower the brightness on those devices, wear blue light blockers, and install apps that will help you adjust the temperature of your displays.

Hack #6

Don’t sleep near your phone or any technology.

Technology affects the brain, stimulating your mind and making it harder to fall asleep. Sounds and blinking lights can cause unwanted awakenings when sleeping next to electronics.

Even if you have your notifications off, EMFs and exposure to EMF can negatively affect sleep quality and will keep you up at night.

So don’t have your devices near your body. High-frequency EMFs are known to damage human DNA and cells.

Put them on airplane mode and preferably out of your bedroom. You don’t need them. If you are using your phone as an alarm (there are better ways than a phone alarm – about that in the next video), replace it with a traditional old-school alarm which you can buy on Amazon.

Hack #7

Optimize your bedroom.

Your bedroom should be only for sleeping. No working, no checking emails, no watching YouTube. The reason why this is important is because you want your brain to associate your bedroom with sleeping only – so you can do that efficiently during the night.

If you teach your brain to work in your bedroom, subconsciously, you will be always kept awake by your brain.

Another thing, when it comes to your subconscious mind, is always looking for a threat – if you have a cluttered bedroom with large furniture and hundreds of things, your mind will keep you up at night because it thinks something will attack you or fall on you. And that’s distracting.

You want to keep your room cold, dark and simple:

• Bed, lamp, and high-quality bedding (organic cotton, hemp, organic linen, wool).

• Have one plant — snake plant (oxygen-producing, looks nice, removes air pollutants, absorbs CO2 during the night).

• Invest in proper air quality in your bedroom – so you are not inhaling any toxic gasses and PBDEs. Get yourself an air purifier or humidifier.

Hack #8

Use earplugs.

Distracting sounds can disrupt your sleep. If you are a light sleeper and any sound can wake you up, this is a must. Your body responds to noise as a stressor.

Wearing high-quality and effective earplugs can help you sleep through the whole night and also help you stay in a calm, relaxed state.

The earplugs I use are called Loops and I highly recommend them.

Hack #9

Use a weighted blanket.

Weighted blankets help you call down the nervous system. By distributing an even amount of weight and pressure across the body, weighed blankets may calm the fight-or-flight response and activate the relaxing parasympathetic nervous system in preparation for sleep.

By using a weighted blanket, you will be able to fall asleep faster with more ease and wake up less frequently during the night.

Hack #10

If needed, use the right supplements.

Before you take supplements, make sure you are getting your minerals, vitamins, and all micronutrients from your diet. If you need to supplement, here are some suggestions:

• GABA

• Valerian Root

• Theanine

• Magnesium

• CBD Oil