Waking Up At 3am? Sleep Experts Share Five Tips To Help You Fall Back Asleep

For years, I didn’t recognise my own insomnia because I have no trouble at all falling asleep.

Nope – the issues arise in the middle of the night, when I wake up at 3AM or so and simply cannot fall back asleep.

Turns out that this is called “sleep maintenance insomnia,” a condition which is believed to affect as many as one in five people in the US.

I know that “clock blocking”, getting up out of bed to do something screen-free, like folding laundry, after about 20 minutes of being awake, and establishing a great nighttime routine can all help.

But what do the experts do in real life, when they find themselves trying their best to nod back off in the wee hours?

Here, I asked Dr Lindsay Browning, a sleep expert at TroubleSleeping.co.uk, as well as independent sleep expert and author of books like A Sleep Divorce: How to Sleep Apart, Not Fall Apart, Dr Neil Stanley, for their thoughts.

Here are the rules they follow themselves:

1) Avoid checking........

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