Prone To Mid-Night Wakeups? How A Holistic M.D. Falls Back Asleep In Minutes

October 3, 2022 — 9:27 AM

If you're one of the lucky few who manages to sleep through the night every night—congratulations. But for the rest of us, waking up at least once in the middle of the night is far from uncommon.

But listen up: Holistic psychiatrist, author, and sleep expert Ellen Vora M.D. shared her personal approach to the pesky phenomenon of "middle sleep" in a recent installment of mbg's new sleep series, The Wind Down—and it's too good not to try yourself.

Middle sleep is a physiologic wake-up that happens between two symmetric blocks of sleep. For example, if you're someone who goes to bed around 10 and usually sleeps eight hours, Vora explains, you might wake up around 2 a.m. (like she tends to herself!).

As sleep doctors have previously told mbg, there's usually nothing wrong with waking up in the middle of the night. But if you wake up and are unable to fall back asleep, that's when problems can occur. To that end, here's Vora's advice.

Like many others, Vora used to stress herself out when she woke up in the middle of the night, worrying that she wouldn't be able to fall asleep and it would subsequently ruin the next day. "And it turns out," she says, "that narrative I was telling myself, by stirring up my stress response, became a self-fulfilling prophecy."

In an Instagram video for mbg, Vora expands on the idea of middle sleep further, explaining that when you wake up in the middle of the night, "what your body really needs is maybe to use the restroom and have a sip of water, and then fall back asleep."

But if you use this brief wake-up window to turn on the bathroom light, start thinking about your to-do list, or check the time on your  phone, it really won't be conducive to falling back asleep. "[When] we flip on the bathroom light we get all this light exposure into our eyes, suppressing our melatonin," she explains. Taking a look at our tech will have the same effect.

So instead of doing any of those things, Vora suggests, you'll just want to shuffle to the bathroom (sans lights if you can!), take a sip of water, and lie back down with your eyes closed. "Trust that you're going to fall back asleep—it might take five or 10 or 20 or 30 minutes, but reassure yourself that this is a normal wake-up and you're going to fall back asleep," she says. Then, prepare to drift back into dreamland once again.