Do you go to sleep very sleepy and wake up around 3 or 4 in the morning? You are not the only person to whom it happens and it is not so strange that it happens to you. Rather the opposite, because when we leave youth behind it is normal to stop sleeping like a dormouse.
There is an explanation, and it is given to us by Dr. Odile Romero, head of the Neurophysiology Section of the Sleep Unit of the Vall d’Hebron Hospital and member of the insomnia working group of the Spanish Sleep Society.
Dr. Romero begins by recalling that sleep is a vital function: “Just like we breathe, just like our hearts beat, just like we digest, due to genetics we also need to sleep”, and there are a couple of very important processes that are involved.
“One is the circadian process,†he explains. “It simply means that we are diurnal beings and that it is easier for us to be awake during the day and sleep at night, unlike other animals that sleep during the day and are awake at night.”
The other is the homeostatic process, which “means that from the moment we wake up we begin to generate the need to go back to sleep.” The expert compares it to a glass that starts the day empty and as the hours go by “filling†with sleep, that is why at night it is more or less easy for us to fall asleep.
And if we fall asleep so comfortably, why do we wake up? “Because we don’t sleep the same all night.” The expert explains that we complete a couple or three sleep cycles, and that each of these cycles includes three phases: a superficial slow phase, a deep slow phase, and a REM phase. The first two repair physical fatigue, while the third, REM, restores memory and intellectual activity.
This first sleep cycle lasts a maximum of three hours and, from here, “the level of alertness and the ability to wake up is more fragile.” And that’s why we woke up.
The second cycle will come naturally and, in some cases, the third as well, but the specialist in clinical neurophysiology says that the problem is that then we have already slept for a few hours and our body’s need is not the same as the moment in which we have gone to bed.
That is why it is difficult for us to fall back into the arms of Morpheus, and even more so if we get nervous because we have woken up and want to sleep. And even more so if we start turning our worries around. But we can do something.
The bottom line is that as we get older we need less sleep and therefore sleep fragility increases.
But, as always, there are exceptions, according to Dr. Romero: “If you are an obsessive or perfectionist person, any problem will upset you more if you wake up in the middle of the night, while calmer people tend to sleep better.”
