309: Middle of the Night Panic

Nighttime waking and scattered thoughts are problem solving's evil twin. If you find yourself awake at 3 am obsessing over your problems, remember that stress and hormonal imbalances can really damage the quality of your sleep.

Show Notes:

IFL Science: Why Do We Wake Around 3am And Dwell On Our Fears And Shortcomings?

VeryWellmind.com: Military Sleep method

Science Direct: Molecular Clock

US Southwestern University: Understanding the circadian clocks of individual cells

Wikipedia: Suprachiasmatic nucleus

NIH: Visual impairment and circadian rhythm disorders

The New Yorker: The Woman who Spent Five Hundred Days in a Cave

Benadryl and Alzheimer's possible link

Transcript:

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Brain Junk, I'm Trace Kerr

[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Amy Barton. And today I'm gonna continue changing your lives because we've talked about how to up your personal hygiene game. And today I'm gonna tell you about why you wake up at 03:00 a.m. And give you some tips and tricks.

[00:00:19] Speaker A: To stop that from happening.

[00:00:21] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:00:24] Speaker A: I am not a 03:00 a.m. Wake up person, so this will be interesting.

[00:00:27] Speaker B: You're not what it.

[00:00:29] Speaker A: No.

[00:00:29] Speaker B: Do you wake up in the night?

[00:00:30] Speaker A: No, I'm not a wake upper.

[00:00:32] Speaker B: Oh, that's interesting. Well, Chris and I both are, and I tend to. On a good night, I just wake up once. But oftentimes I will wake up in this somewhere between two and 04:00 a.m.. Time. And so we're both like, why is that happening to us? And some of it is Shelby the cat.

She seems to get the zoomies. So let's back up, too. Greg Murray, professor and director, center for Mental Health in Sweden, Swinburne University of Technology. Swin. Yeah, Swinburne University of Technology.

He's a psychology researcher, and his expertise is in mood and sleep and circadian systems. Oh, and so he talks about this in an article for IFL science. For those of you who don't wake up like trace, it's bad because in the middle of the night, all of the thoughts seem to be. It's never like, I was so good in that meeting today, and I just love these blankets, and it's not that stuff. It's distressing and punitive thoughts, and they're irrational and unproductive. If you are alert enough that you have awoken, usually some people, it might not be that way, but it's definitely the way my brain works. It will worry about everything and anything....

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