when you wake up in the middle of the night but you FEEL like you’ve slept the full night… what happened?

Question

Went to bed around 10pm, woke up around 1:30 feeling refreshed after and wondered whether my alarm had gone off. Now I can’t get back to sleep because I feel quite rested. Why?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Humans sleep in cycles of multiple stages of sleep, which repeat every 90-120 minutes. If you wake up at the end of a cycle, you tend to wake up refreshed and not groggy, and you may struggle to go to sleep even if you’re well short of you nightly average.