Awake at 3 or 4 a.m. and can't get back to sleep? A calm plan for adults over 50

If you fall asleep without much trouble but find yourself wide awake at 3 or 4 in the morning, you're far from alone. The National Institute on Aging notes that as we get older, sleep tends to become lighter and we wake up more often in the night. Many people also start getting sleepy earlier in the evening — and waking earlier too.

Common doesn't mean you have to put up with it, though. Here's a calm, practical plan.

In the moment: getting back to sleep

1. Don't check the clock or your phone. Working out how many hours are left switches your mind on. Turn the clock away from the bed tonight.
2. Keep the lights low. If you get up for the bathroom, use a dim night-light rather than the main light, and settle straight back into bed.
3. Breathe slowly — out for longer than in — for a few minutes. Or relax each part of your body in turn, from your toes up to your face.
4. If you're still wide awake after what feels like about 20 minutes, get up. Go somewhere comfortable with a low light and do something calm and a little dull. Go back to bed when your eyes feel heavy. This is advice the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the NHS both give, because lying in bed wide awake night after night teaches your brain that bed is a place for being awake.
5. Get up at your usual time tomorrow, even after a rough night. A lie-in pushes your body clock later and makes the next night harder.

During the day: making the next night easier

• Keep a steady wake-up time, weekends included. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute suggests keeping weekday and weekend schedules within about an hour of each other.
• Get daylight in the morning and be active during the day.
• Watch the afternoon caffeine. Its effects can last up to 8 hours.
• Be careful with alcohol. It can help you drop off, but it makes sleep lighter and more broken in the second half of the night — exactly when early waking happens. The National Institute on Aging advises avoiding it, even in small amounts, if sleep is a problem.
• Keep naps short and early, or skip them for a week and see if your nights change.
• If bathroom trips wake you, drink less in the last couple of hours before bed — but not less over the whole day.

When early waking is a sign to get checked

Talk to your doctor if:

• you wake in the night on 3 or more nights a week for more than 3 months, and it's affecting your days — this is how chronic insomnia is described, and there's an effective treatment for it called CBT-I
• you snore loudly, or someone has noticed you stop breathing, choke or gasp in your sleep
• night-time bathroom trips are new, getting more frequent, or come with thirst or swelling
• you wake very early and your mood has been low for more than two weeks
• you fall asleep very early in the evening and wake very early, and it doesn't shift — a clinician may suggest a different approach to light for this pattern, so ask before trying a light box