Startled from your slumber, you catch sight of the clock: 3 a.m. yet again.

Being pulled from sleep in the wee hours repeatedly can be incredibly frustrating. However, a prominent sleep specialist suggests the key to drifting back into dreamland is embracing your wakefulness.

Though it might seem contrary to logic, Dr. David Garley, an NHS general practitioner and director at The Better Sleep Clinic, explained to the Daily Mail that the stress we place on ourselves to return to sleep often hinders our ability to do so.

“If you wake up feeling irritated about being awake and that irritation prevents you from falling back asleep, that’s where the issue lies,” he stated.

“But in reality, it’s about acknowledging that waking up briefly during the night is normal,” he added.

Society and our daily lives largely adhere to a schedule which slots into our 24 daily hours, but our bodies have their own inbuilt clock system, called the circadian rhythm.

The circadian rhythm’s role is to regulate the sleep-wake cycle, and everyone’s is different.

It does this by responding to light and darkness, controlling when an individual feels sleepy or alert by releasing the hormones melatonin and cortisol respectively.

Waking up in the middle of the night is a familiar gripe 

Contrary to popular belief, no one sleeps through the night without stirring, we sleep in 90 minute cycles, naturally waking up after each one.

‘Initially you fall into light sleep. You then go deeper. Then about 30 minutes into your sleep cycle, you have a deeper state you might be in for another half an hour,’ Dr Garley says.

‘You then have your REM sleep stage, this is your vivid dreaming sleep.’

During REM periods, the brain is highly active, similar to when you’re awake.

‘The whole thing is called a sleep cycle that lasts on average 90 minutes. And after each sleep cycle, you wake up.

‘Everybody wakes up and you don’t necessarily remember your dreams, but there is a period of wake and then you go back into another sleep cycle.

‘Some people just have substantial awakenings between sleep cycles, and this can be more common if you are a little bit stressed.

‘If this is the case, you might wake up and go into a proper wake state.’

The sleep cycle can also be affected by spending too long in bed

Dr Garley says that it’s not only the peaks and troughs of the sleep cycle that have us waking up in the early hours.

One of the reasons why 3am is such a familiar—and frustrating—time to find yourself wide awake and staring at the ceiling is because of what’s going on inside our bodies.

‘This time usually coincides with the lowest point of your circadian rhythm, when you’re into the deep night phase,’ he explains.

‘At this point, your body temperature drops. Sometimes it can get so cold you wake up.’

The sleep cycle can also be affected by spending too long in bed.

‘Because you’re stretching out those sleep times, you have to fit in periods of wake,’ Dr Garley explains.

‘Imagine if your sleep requirement is say, seven hours, but you spend nine hours in bed, there’s two hours of wake that need to be slotted in somewhere.’

The NHS recommends on average adults should get seven to nine hours sleep per night, children should get nine to 13 hours and toddlers and babies should get 12 to 17 hours.

The sleep cycle, which typically lasts for nine hours on average,  repeats throughout the night

Dr David Garley spoke to the Daily Mail 

 Consistently failing to get enough shut eye has long been shown to raise the risk of obesity, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Poor sleep has been linked to a number of health problems, including cancer, stroke and infertility.

But experts have long advised that waking up during the night does not necessarily mean you have insomnia, which figures suggest affects up to 14million Britons.

Insomnia can be caused by stress, anxiety, alcohol, caffeine or nicotine, noise, shift work and jet lag.

Another suggestion for why people wake up at 3am is due to a natural drop in blood sugar levels, which triggers the release of cortisol.

Dubbed the ‘stress hormone’, a surge in cortisol is what wakes you up in the morning, and unfortunately for some, in the middle of the night.

Another hormone, can also be at play, with Dr Garley explaining that as we age, we produce less melatonin, which the body releases when it’s time to sleep.

‘That low melatonin might actually cause a bit of sleep fragmentation, which is why there is some evidence melatonin typically only works for people over 55,’ he says.

The older you get, the more likely you are to experience sleep fragmentation, partly because of health conditions which can cause pain and discomfort, especially when you are immobile for long periods.

‘People get arthritis or other things that cause pain which makes you wake up more substantially after a sleep phase,’ says Dr Garley.

‘Also, if you’re taking pain relief medications, and these wear off around 3am then that can cause more awakenings.’

There’s also the classic reason of waking up in the night as you need to use the toilet, a common complaint of older men.

‘You might wake up if you’ve got a full bladder, think “I should go for a pee”, and that wakes you up more substantially,’ he says, adding that if it’s a consistent issue it’s best to visit your GP to rule out prostate cancer.

Similarly, suffering night sweats can cause you to wake up at random times, and while they can be a symptom of menopause, if you’re also experiencing a racing heart or hot flushes, it’s time to seek medical advice,

So what is the solution when you’ve woken up at 3am and can’t get back to sleep?

Dr Garley says if you genuinely cannot nod off again, the best thing to do is get up and get out of bed.

‘We always say, get up, get out of bed, sit in another room and find something else to do that’s relaxing and distracting,’ he says.

‘You’re not doing this to try and make yourself fall asleep, what you’re doing is distracting yourself and doing something present while you wait for that natural urge to sleep to come back in.

‘These urges to sleep are quite wave-like so it’s fine if you’ve woken up.

‘Just try to not get annoyed while you wait for a wave of sleep to come back. Read a bit, watch TV, do something else.’