Doctor shares easy way to fall back asleep if you keep waking up at 3am
It may just be a better option to counting sheep...
Callum Jones
A healthcare professional has shared a simple trick to fall back to sleep if waking up at 3am is becoming a common theme.
Waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to drift off again is hugely frustrating, especially when you have to be awake at 7am for work.
Tossing and turning can last for hours, and by the time you fall asleep once more, it's only an hour to go until the alarm sends a rude awakening.
Apparently, it's quite common to wake up at 3am, and TV doctor Amir Khan has now shares his tips for falling back asleep during 'sad hours'.
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In a video posted to Instagram, Dr Khan, who's regularly seen on ITV breakfast and daytime tele, said: "Guys, I shared a reel about why people wake up at 3am in the morning, and hundreds of thousands of people have watched it, but lots of people have asked 'well, what do you do when you wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning? How do you get back off to sleep?'
"Let's talk about a technique called cognitive shuffling. You know that I've talked at length about the health benefits of sleep.
The doctor continued: "But what if you just can't get off to sleep because your brain won't let you? Imagine it. Everyone else is asleep, the house is quiet, you're lying there in bed, but your mind won't stop churning out stressful thoughts.
"Work, money, kids, planning, scheduling, problem solving. Your brain is too active to let you sleep. In fact, the stress of all these thoughts tells the brain it's not safe to sleep, and you have to stay on high alert."
At this point, you may be thinking the classic of counting sheep is necessarily, but Dr Khan explained an alternative method to try and get back to sleep.
He continued: "It's called cognitive shuffling, and the idea is it interrupts your racing mind, and instead scrambles your thoughts, inviting your brain to go into sleep mode, and assuring it that it is safe to sleep."
So, how does cognitive shuffling work?
Well, you need to start by thinking of a random word, and then focusing on the first letter of that word. Following that, you need to list a bunch of words starting with that letter.
Going through the list, you're then going to want to visualise each phrase, before moving onto the second letter of your original chosen word and repeating the steps.
Continuing with each letter of the original word will hopefully have you back to sleep in no time.