Sleep expert reveals reasons you keep waking up at 3am and when to see a doctor

A sleep expert has revealed why you could be waking up at 3am every night. While this is a relatively common phenomenon, in some cases it coud require a trip to your doctor.

According to the NHS, the average adult needs between seven and nine hours of sleep every night.

Without a consistent amount of sleep we can not only be left tired and run down but in the long-term it can be damaging to your health.

Therefore, any issues with your sleep shouldn't be taken lightly. Speaking to the , psychologist and sleep expert Alexa Kane, explained: "At one point, you may have had a reason to wake up at that time, maybe in response to sleep apnea or a crying baby. Your body may have become conditioned to it."

More worrying is the fact that this behaviour can become repetitive if not dealt with. "We often see chronic insomnia develop in people with ineffective sleep routines - such as waking at 3am and staying in bed for hours trying to fall back to sleep," noted Dr Kane.

"This behaviour leads to the association that bed does not mean sleep and reinforces insomnia." She listed some of the common reasons you could be waking up every night.

Trips to the bathroom

While you sleep, the body is still at working breaking down what you ate and drank through the day. As a result, it's quite common to need to urinate in the night.

But if it becomes too common, this could be a sign of nocturia. This could be caused by diabetes, or, in men, prostate cancer.

Your environment

This seems obvious but your environment can have a huge impact on your sleep. Noises such as ambulance sirens or lights coming in through the curtains can wake you up. This is much more likely to happen in the wee hours of the morning, as you're coming out of REM sleep.

Stress, anxiety or depression

It is not just our bodies that can wake us up. The Cleveland Clinic warns that intrusive thoughts could "jolt" us up at 3am. "In more serious cases, some people even experience sleep paralysis," it says.

Anxiety and depression can both lead to poor sleep patterns. Dr Kane conintued: "If you wake up and begin to experience worry, anxiety or frustration, you likely have activated your sympathetic nervous system, your 'fight-or-flight' system.

"When this happens, your brain switches from sleep mode to wake mode. Your mind may start to race, and your heart rate and blood pressure may go up. That makes it much harder to get back to sleep."

If this continues it can result in insomnia, a sleep disorder.

Sleep disorders

But how can we tell if these late-night awakenings are tied to a specific sleep disorder? If you're suffering from insomnia you might experience symptoms such as:

• Finding it hard to go to sleep
• Waking up several times during the night
• Lying awake at night
• Waking up early and cannot go back to sleep
• Still feeling tired after waking up
• Finding it hard to nap during the day even though you're tired
• Feeling tired and irritable during the day
• Finding it difficult to concentrate during the day because you're tired

If you're regularly waking up at night this could also be a symptom of sleep apnoea - when your breathing stops and starts while you sleep.

The Cleveland Clinic warns: "If you have this disorder, you occasionally stop breathing during sleep. Besides waking you up, sleep apnea can disrupt your heart rhythm and reduce the flow of oxygen to your body."

Other symptoms of sleep apnoea include:

• Snoring
• Being jolted awake while choking or gasping for air
• Daytime sleepiness or fatigue.

"If you have these symptoms, see a physician or sleep expert," Dr Kane said. "Untreated sleep apnea can cause heart disease, diabetes, obesity and other health problems."

When to see a doctor

The NHS says you should see a GP if changing your sleeping habits has not helped your insomnia, you've had trouble sleeping for months, or your insomnia is affecting your daily life in a way that makes it hard for you to cope.