I'm doctor Michael Bruce, the sleep doctor.

One of the top questions that I'm asked almost every day for my patients.

Believe it or not, isn't?

How can I fall asleep easier?

It's more what happens if I wake up in the middle of the night?

How can I get back to bed?

So, first of all, a few things to understand, a lot of people turn to me and they say, you know what?

I have a tendency to wake up somewhere between two and three o'clock in the morning.

Turns out that's based on your biology.

So when you're falling asleep, your core body temperature rises, rises, rises till about 10 30 at night.

It hits a peak and then it begins to drop.

That drop is a signal to your brain to release Melatonin.

Why is that important here?

Because as your core body temperature keeps dropping at some point, it's got to go back up when it starts to go back up, you move into a lighter stage of sleep.

Guess what time of night?

That usually is somewhere between two and three o'clock in the morning.

So I want you to know and understand this is biology that's getting to you.

Everybody wakes up at that time.

Just not, everybody has difficulty falling back to sleep.

Ok?

You've got a little bit of difficulty falling back to sleep.

What are you gonna do about that?

I can tell you what you shouldn't do.

First thing you shouldn't do is you shouldn't look at the clock.

Now, I know this is gonna be a tough thing to do because everybody looks at the clock and then they instantly do the mental math and they say it's three o'clock.

Now, I've got to get up at 6 30 sleep, sleep sleep and they try to force themselves to sleep.

I'm gonna be honest with you sleep.

It's a lot like love, the less you look for it, the more it shows up.

What I mean by that is you can't try to make yourself sleep.

In fact, the best thing that you can possibly do is relax.

So if you could do me a favor and don't look at the clock, I'm not so foolish as to think that that's really gonna work with you because almost everybody looks at the clock.

So let's talk about a couple of other things that are important for you to understand.

Another thing is we've now learned about something called non sleep, deep rest.

This is where you're lying in a position.

It's dark, it's quiet, you're not moving, turns out this is a bit rejuvenate.

It's not exactly like sleep.

About an hour of that is worth about 20 minutes of sleep.

So, don't worry if you're lying there and you're still not falling asleep, it's ok.

You're getting some form of rejuvenation.

And don't forget we're trying to look at your anxiety here.

We don't want your anxiety to increase in the middle of the night, the natural sleep process to be able to take over the other thing that you really need to understand.

And this is an important metric is in order to enter into a state of unconsciousness, you need a heart rate of 60 or below.

That becomes very, very important, especially if you come back from going to the bathroom or you wake up in the middle of the night and you feel your heart rate is up.

Speaking of going to the bathroom, that might not be the best idea.

I wanna be clear about something.

If you gotta go to the bathroom, please go to the bath bathroom.

But 100 people, they wake up in the middle of the night and they say, well, maybe I'll see if I need to pee.

This really isn't a great idea because remember your heart rate needs to be below 60.

So when you go from a lying position to a seated position to a standing position and you walk across your bedroom, guess what your heart rate is up.

So if you don't have to go to the bathroom, don't go.

Now, if you get back to bed or you're in bed and you don't want to get up, we gotta do something to lower that heart rate.

My favorite technique is called four 78 breathing.

And what it does is it actually lowers your heart rate dramatically, actually below 60 which is exactly where we want it to be.

It's quite simple.

You breathe in for a count of four, you hold for a count of seven and you breathe out for a count of eight.

I wanna be clear.

You don't push air in and out really hard.

This is a gentle breath in, filling your lungs, holding and then pushing all the air out.

What this does is it dumps out excess carbon dioxide from your lungs allows fresh air to come in.

It means your heart doesn't have to work as hard, which means it lowers your heart rate.

That's kind of what we're looking for here.

So when you wake up in the middle of the night, if you don't have to go to the bathroom and hopefully you didn't look at the clock.

Here's what I want you to do.

Remember there's non sleep, deep breath.

So you're still getting some level of rejuvenation and you can do 478 breathing to allow your body to lower its heart rate and eventually get back to sleep.

Now, one thing that people say to me and say, well, Doctor Bruce, what if I do 567 cycles and I don't fall asleep.

Don't worry.

Remember, number one, this isn't the only time you've ever stayed up all night long.

And number two lying there is still some level of rejuvenation.

I do want to give people a few different troubleshooting tips just in case it's going for a little bit long.

Number one, if you can avoid it, don't get up.

A lot of people will get up, walk around the house, maybe move into a different room, even turn on a light, maybe pull out their phone or read a book.

I'm really not for that.

I really think lying in bed as long as it's not too frustrating for you.

And you're doing that 478 breathing is gonna be a great idea.

The other thing to avoid, you might find yourself to think.

Well, I'm a little thirsty.

Maybe I should go get a drink of water.

It's probably not necessary.

What I would rather you do keep a glass of water, room temperature by your bed.

That way you can reach over, have a quick drink.

And in the morning time, remember I'm always asking you to drink a lot of water anyway.

So go ahead when you wake up in the morning and drink that whole thing.

Do me a favor.

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A note in the comments and if you wanna learn more head on over to the sleep doctor dot com.

This is Doctor Michael Bruce the sleep doctor.

Wishing you sweet dreams.