5 Scientific Tips for Getting Back to Sleep After You’ve Woken Up in the Middle of the Night


We’ve all been there: You fall asleep just fine after a long day of work, but at around 2 a.m., something happens. You’re suddenly wide awake, and no matter how many sheep you count or glasses of warm milk you down, nothing seems to get you back to bed. While most people associate insomnia with the inability to fall asleep in the first place, it also applies to people who find themselves unable to fall back to sleep after waking up in the middle of the night.

According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 30 to 35 percent of U.S. adults experience "brief symptoms" of insomnia, while 10 percent suffer chronically, with symptoms three or more times a week for at least three months. Though some severe cases may prompt a visit to the doctor, the occasional occurrence can be helped with these five science-backed tips.


When you’re trying to fall back to sleep in the middle of the night, one of the biggest obstacles in your way is light. This is especially true when it comes to that blue light from your smartphone shining right into your eyes. "Electronic devices emit light that can keep you up—especially the ones you hold closer to your face, like a mobile device," W. Christopher Winter, director of the Martha Jefferson Sleep Medicine Center, told Men’s Health.

The temptation to scroll through social media or a few news sites when you can’t sleep can be hard to resist, but yielding to it can turn a 15-minute sleep interruption into an entire night lost. Do your brain a favor and leave the phones, tablets, and e-readers off.


While you’re ignoring newsfeeds and social media, you’re going to want to stay away from your smartphone’s clock, too. In fact, don’t worry at all about the time when you’re trying to fall back to sleep, because it’s only going to increase your stress.

Think about it: If you need to be up for work at 6 a.m., and you randomly woke up at 4 a.m., you’re likely going to do the classic, “Well if I fall asleep now, I’ll get two more hours of sleep before my alarm goes off.” Then what happens? Nothing. Then you set another deadline, and chances are you’ll get nowhere with that, too. Soon it’s 5:59 a.m. and you’re still awake, thanks to all the undue stress you put on your body to fall back asleep by a certain time.

"The problems occur when people's minds start to race and they start to worry about things," neurologist Brian Murray told CBC Canada. "Looking at the clock will make people feel anxious about not falling back to sleep. That causes the body to release fight-or-flight hormones, which interfere with the sleep onset process."

Don’t worry about the time—that’s already out of your control. Instead, concentrate on practical tips to solve the problem.


Still can’t get back to sleep after 20 minutes? Well, it might to time to get up—for the moment, anyway. In an article for the Huffington Post, James Findley, Ph.D., clinical director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at the University of Pennsylvania, recommended people get out of bed and do some light busy work after that initial waiting period.

Among the activities he recommends are stretching, light reading, or a puzzle—basically, do anything to get your mind off the fact that you can’t sleep, and with any luck, that will be exactly what you need to doze back off.


A tense body likely won’t be falling asleep anytime soon, so you’ll want to make sure you’re actually relaxed while in bed. One way to accomplish this is to do some deep breathing—in through your nose and out of your mouth in a rhythmic cycle. According to Erich P. Voigt of New York University, you can also help lull your mind to sleep by repeating a common phrase or word—like “relax”—in rhythm with your breathing.


Sleep experts Ilene M. Rosen and Shalini Paruthi both say that one of the keys to falling back to sleep in the middle of the night is to focus on mental images of what's most relaxing to you. For them, it was imagining themselves on a beach or back at a favorite family vacation spot. "I can feel the Sun’s warmth on my skin, I can hear the ocean waves. I can smell the saltiness of the sea," Paruthi said. This type of guided imagery—where you carefully imagine every detail of a favorite memory or activity to get your mind off your sleep woes—is also recommended by the National Sleep Foundation.

For you, these images could be anything—thinking about a favorite movie, imagining yourself at a Yankees game, or remembering some of your favorite books. It's all about whatever memories or thoughts relax you. So instead of stressful newsfeeds or the mocking hands of a clock, your mind will be on a beach, in your favorite restaurant, or simply remembering the sights, sounds, and smells of a perfect day—and hopefully, you'll be back to sleep before you know it.

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Andrea Piacquadio / Pexels.com

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The Reason Some People Never Return Shopping Carts, According to Science

Abandoned shopping carts could be a sign of social dysfunction.
Abandoned shopping carts could be a sign of social dysfunction.
adisa/iStock via Getty Images

On the spectrum of aberrant behavior, leaving a shopping cart in the middle of a parking space doesn’t quite rise to the level of homicide. But poor cart etiquette is nonetheless a breakdown of the social fabric, one in which some consumers express little regard for others by failing to return a cart to its proper place. Why does this happen?

In a piece for Scientific American, Krystal D’Costa examined some plausible reasons why shoppers avoid the cart receptacle. It might be too far from where they parked, they might have a child that makes returning it difficult, the weather might be bad, or they might have physical limitations that make returning it challenging. Alternately, they may simply believe it’s the job of the supermarket or store employee to fetch their used cart.

According to D’Costa, cart returners might be motivated by social pressure—they fear a disapproving glance from others—or precedent. If no other carts have been tossed aside, they don’t want to be first.

People who are goal-driven aren’t necessarily concerned with such factors. Their desire to get home, remain with their child, or stay dry overrides societal guidelines.

Ignoring those norms if a person feels they’re not alone in doing so was examined in a study [PDF] published in the journal Science in 2008. In the experiment, researchers observed two alleys where bicycles were parked. Both alleys had signs posted prohibiting graffiti. Despite the sign, one of them had markings on the surfaces. Researchers then stuck a flyer to the bicycle handles to see how riders would react. In the alley with graffiti, 69 percent threw it aside or stuck it on another bicycle. In the alley with no graffiti, only 33 percent of the subjects littered. The lesson? People might be more likely to abandon social order if the environment surrounding them is already exhibiting signs of neglect.

In another experiment, researchers performed the flyer trial with a parking lot that had carts organized and carts scattered around at separate times. When carts were everywhere, 58 percent of people left the flyers on the ground compared to 30 percent when the carts were cared for.

Social examples are clearly influential. The more people return carts, the more likely others will do the same. There will, of course, be outliers. Some readers wrote to D’Costa following her first piece to state that they didn’t return carts in order to keep store workers busy and gainfully employed, ignoring the fact that the primary function of those staff members is to get the carts from the receptacle and back to the store. It’s also rarely their primary job.

Until returning carts becomes universally-accepted behavior, random carts will remain a fixture of parking lots. And ALDI will continue charging a quarter deposit to grab one.  

[h/t Scientific American]