Why Is It so hard to fall BACK asleep

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I’ll Paint You a picture
00:00 The blanket gets pulled over my body, the light turns off
00:10 i am asleep

07:00: and ambulance passes by, a ray of sub hits my face directly, i have go to the bathroom whatever It Is, i wake up
07:05 situation solved. Given my alarm Is at 8, I try go back to sleep.
07:30: given i’m still awake, I decide to fully get out of bed, since 30mins isn’t worth It

This happens to me at least weekly. Why? Why Is going back to sleep once You’ve been women up so much harder than going to sleep the First time?

In: Biology

14 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

okkk lemme explain with an analogy

Think of a glass of water. To this you add a green dye. Now the water is green.
A clear glass of water is how you feel when you are sleepy with no hormones (messengers) in your brain and body (atleast those related to sleep). When you add green dye, the water now gets filled with color, the color is the result of hormones that keep you awake or stop you from sleeping. Your body is sensitive to light, when your eyes perceive light your brain releases certain hormones to keep you awake since it thinks the sun is out hence you dont feel sleepy.

Now its kinda hard to get clear water back from the colored green water. The only way is too dump more water into the glass until it the color has been washed out aka getting tired. This takes a lot of water or with respect to your body, a lot of activity or work. Thats why its super hard to fall asleep once youre flooded with hormones that keep you awake since it takes a while to suppress them and become tired or sleepy again.

Hope this helps!

Anonymous 0 Comments

man that sounds rough. its like your brain just says nah fam no more sleep for you. once im awake its like my body hits the snooze button on dreams.

Anonymous 0 Comments

You’ve slept almost 7 hours – why do you expect to fall asleep again?
If it was 3 hours or something, I can understand – but 7 is plenty.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I think this depends just on the person, if i wake up in the morning i can fall back asleep in under 30 seconds most of the time.

Anonymous 0 Comments

If you’re startled awake, your body may be filled with a rush of adrenaline (sort of a built-in unga bunga caveman instinct that keeps you awake & alert to fight the saber-toothed tiger that just invaded your cave-village).

Nowadays, we don’t usually have to fight off vicious creatures in the middle of the night; but we still possess those chemical pathways and responses that have allowed us to survive all these years. Unfortunately for you, it’s hard for your sleeping body to differentiate between an ambulance siren and a saber-toothed tiger — so it sends all the signals, hormones, etc. anyway just in case it’s the big cat.

For the other, non-startling situations (like going to the bathroom), it’s possible that your body didn’t start sending “wake-up signals” until you actually walked around a bit more. That would explain why you were still tired while initially sitting on the toilet, but you found it difficult to sleep after walking back to bed. It’s like your body/brain said, “Ah, yes, this extra walking confirms that we want to be awake right now! I’ll send all the appropriate hormones.”

Anonymous 0 Comments

I have the opposite problem – Why do I always fall back to sleep?
I wake at 7:00 naturally, lying there I think I should get up and do XYZ. Blink and its been 3 hours. repeat until I drag myself up.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s entirely possibly you don’t actually need as much sleep as you’re trying to get. The amount needed to feel well rested varies with age, exercise (physical and mental), diet, and environmental conditions.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Your circadian rythym is working…. get up when you wake up. Go for a 30 minute walk and you will feel better all day and eventually you will start falling asleep earlier and before you know it you won’t miss that extra hour

Anonymous 0 Comments

Count yourself lucky. If I wake up for whatever reason, whether it’s after 5 minutes of sleep or 5 hours of sleep, it takes me hours to get back to sleep.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It isn’t always, but the times during the night when you wake up and then go back to sleep, you don’t remember very well.

Source: wife often complains that she woke me because she needed something in the night and I spoke to her and told her I would… Then i went back to sleep