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This Can Help Light Sleepers Make It Through The Night, Every Night

Author:

Emma Loewe

November 26, 2020

By Emma Loewe

mbg Contributor

Emma Loewe is the former Sustainability and Health Director at mindbodygreen. She is the author of "Return to Nature: The New Science of How Natural Landscapes Restore Us" and the co-author of "The Spirit Almanac: A Modern Guide To Ancient Self Care." Emma received her B.A. in Environmental Science & Policy with a specialty in environmental communications from Duke University. In addition to penning over 1,500 mbg articles on topics from the water crisis in California to the rise of urban beekeeping, her work has appeared on Grist, Bloomberg News, Bustle, and Forbes.

Image by Liliya Rodnikova / Stocksy

November 26, 2020

The honk of a horn or rumbling of the heater can quickly go from innocuous to annoying if you're a light sleeper. Constantly getting up in the middle of the night is frustrating, and it can cause you to wake up feeling groggy morning after morning.

"It's not the total hours you're in bed; it's how much deep sleep and REM sleep you're getting," functional medicine doctor Robert Rountree, M.D., explained on the mindbodygreen podcast earlier this year.

The root of your wakeups.

There are many causes of frequent wakeups—some of which are easier to control. If you think you might have an underlying sleep issue like sleep apnea, that's something to get checked out by your doctor.

If it's your environment that keeps jolting you awake, experiment with new ways to make sure your room is as cool, quiet, and dark as possible and that the humidity levels are in a normal range. If the urge to go to the bathroom is the issue, maybe ditch that glass of water by your bed and stop drinking water a bit earlier in the evening.

Already addressed these factors and still have trouble staying asleep? It could be lingering worries from the day that are keeping you from restorative rest.

Research shows that when we're holding on to too much stress at night, our sympathetic nervous system is activated 1. That's the one responsible for our fight-or-flight response, and it sends a signal to the rest of the body to produce stimulating hormones like adrenaline, norepinephrine, and cortisol. Not exactly a recipe for peaceful, steady sleep.

Where sleep support+ comes in.

Managing stress and your reaction to it during the day can help keep nightly jitters at bay. For a little extra support at night, certain supplements can also help the body relax before bed. mbg's sleep support+ was formulated to do just that.*

sleep support+

The product's main ingredient, magnesium glycinate, is a combination of magnesium and the amino acid glycine. Rountree explains that this mineral can help people not only fall asleep but stay asleep, due to the way it interacts with the body's nervous system.*

"Magnesium helps to calm the central nervous system, which helps to prepare the brain to turn off and also to keep it functioning at a calmer level throughout the night," he previously told mbg.*

It won't rid you of stress entirely—nothing can—but it can help take the edge off stress at night, making it easier to sleep through the night and fall back to sleep quickly if you do end up waking up.* Music to any light sleeper's tired ears.