Are naps cheating
Sleep researcher Dr Tomas Lindqvist joins Hana to settle the nap question: how long, how late, who benefits and who should avoid them, with practical rules for shift workers and new parents.
Why you wake at 3am
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Show notes
The 3am problem
Almost everyone wakes briefly several times a night. The question is why some people roll over and others are awake until dawn. Hana explains sleep cycles, cortisol timing and the role of the bedside clock in keeping you up.
- What a normal night looks like, cycle by cycle
- Why early waking becomes more common with age and alcohol
- The clock-checking habit and how to break it
- What Hana tells patients to do after twenty minutes awake
- When 3am waking is worth a visit to your GP
Next time, a researcher from Adelaide on whether naps help or hurt.
Transcript
Hello, I am Dr Hana Kaur Dhillon and this is Lights Out Lab, a show about sleep for people who would like to do more of it. In this first episode we are tackling the question I hear most often in clinic, which is why do I wake up at 3am and why can I not get back to sleep. If that is you, I want you to know two things straight away. Waking in the night is normal. Everyone does it. And the thing that keeps you awake afterwards is usually not your body, it is what you do in the next ten minutes. We will go through what a night of sleep actually looks like, why this gets worse as we get older, and the one habit I ask every patient to drop. No gadgets required. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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