Who hasn’t experienced waking up in the middle of the night with a ringing in their ears? It’s difficult to get back to sleep because one’s mind is filled with depressing thoughts.
This phenomenon is known as wolf hour.
Christian Benedict, a sleep researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden, answers the most important questions about the wolf hour in an interview.
Why do you wake up? How do you find your way back to sleep and how can you counteract the nocturnal brooding hours?
The wolf hour
We all wake up several times at night. On average between 10 to 20 times. But we usually can’t remember anything in the morning.
The wolf hour, on the other hand, is the phenomenon when you wake up in the second phase of the night from around two o’clock and then lie awake for a longer period of time. Often you begin to roll over your thoughts, worry and be angry.
According to a German sleep expert, this is because:
“At night you often see things more dramatically. One of the reasons for this is that certain areas of the brain and messenger substances in the brain are less active. We are therefore less rational. The balance shifts towards the feelings. “
Tips for falling asleep again
Lying awake forever and surrendering to tormenting thoughts does not bring the insomniac closer to the longed-for sleep.
Benedict says:
- Leave the room, for example, sit in the living room and turn on a light
- Write down your thoughts in a small book so that you can read them well the next morning
- Create a positive, preferably passive, distraction, like listening to a history podcast
Tips for sleeping through the night
The wolf hour does not have to become an unpleasant normal. The sleep researcher says that you can avoid the nocturnal brooding hour with a handful of simple tricks.
- Our body adjusts to sunlight. That is why we should spend as much time as possible outside in the light during the day and limit our activities in the evening.
- Ventilate the bedroom well at a temperature of around 18 degrees
- Do not drink alcohol before sleeping
- In the evening, write down a kind of to-do list and a done list. Write down what you have done today and what you have to do tomorrow or the coming week. This helps not to take the thoughts to sleep with you
- AND ABOVE ALL: Regular bed times. The brain loves it when it knows what’s coming
Natural sign of age
Older people in particular often complain about the hour of wolves. Of course, the same tips mentioned will help seniors. However, deteriorating sleep is also a completely normal symptom of old age.
“With age, you sleep less deeply and wake up more often. The brain ages and functions increasingly poorly. Because of this, it is also less able to regulate sleep and wake times. In addition, there are often physical pains or aches and pains that disrupt sleep,” says the sleep researcher.
Don’t overlook sleep apnea
In general, however, the sleep researcher’s tips and tricks should bring about an improvement. If you do not notice any positive effect, you could have undetected sleep apnea.
Sleep apnea causes repeated nocturnal pauses in breathing that put the heart, lungs and bladder on alert. As a result, you wake up.
Sleep apnea should definitely be treated by a doctor.
Image Credit: Getty
You were reading: Why do we wake up so often at 2 a.m. … and how to beat the so-called wolf hour