If you are unaware 3am is a magical time in our 24 hour circadian cycle.

If you are waking up at 3am, you need to pay attention. There are some really critical reasons why you’re waking up which I’ll share below.

But I wanted to share with you what I’ve learned about circadian cycles from a book called Yes, No, Maybe Chronobiotic Nutrition.

In this book the authors Atom Bergstrom and Marcella Von Harting, talk about timing and how important timing is for our health, our sleep and our longevity.

They describe how every organ we have runs off a 24 hour cycle based on the suprachiasmatic nucleus, lateral geniculate nucleus and the ventromedial nucleus. All terms you’ve probably never heard before.

Before I go any further I want to define these terms because they were new to me until a few years ago.

Suprachiasmatic Nucleus

The The Suprachiasmatic Nucleus is a tiny area inside the hypothalamus of the brain. It is considered the “master clock” inside the human body. It receives direct input via photons of light traveling through the retinohypothalamic tract. Yes you see through your eyes but your eyes act more like a clock than they do a camera. Every cell of the body also has its own internal clock, yet each cell through synapses of light communicate with the SCN to gauge and coordinate internal timing mechanisms. It’s so fascinating how this all works. The more you understand these mind blowing chemical reactions that happen in the flash of a second, the harder it is to think we evolved from monkeys.

Another thing about the SCN is that it regulates the production of melatonin in the pineal gland, which helps control sleep patterns.

Lateral Geniculate Nucleus

The Lateral Geniculate Nucleus (LGN) is a super important part of the visual system that’s in the thalamus. It processes visual information from the retina and relays it to the visual cortex in the brain. It’s not know how this is done. There’s so much in the human body that we just don’t know yet. Also, the LGN is also involved in circadian regulation, mostly in response to darkness cues from external light.

This darkness-entrained internal oscillator helps your body adapt to night-time activities, influencing sleep patterns and other physiological processes that occur during periods of low light. The LGN’s role in integrating visual and circadian information is extremely crucial for maintaining the body’s alignment with the external light-dark cycle.

Ventromedial Nucleus

The ventromedial nucleus (VMN) of the hypothalamus is mostly known as the satiety center of your brain and plays a vital role in regulating hunger, metabolism, and energy balance. It responds to signals from food intake, helping to synchronize eating patterns with the body’s internal clock. This is really key when understanding that food is capture photons of light from the sun. The VMN is a food-entrained internal oscillator that significantly influences circadian rhythms related to metabolism and energy homeostasis. The crazy thing is that it also interacts with other hypothalamic nuclei to modulate feeding behavior and energy expenditure, making it essential for helping you maintain metabolic health and a healthy weight.

Every organ has specific jobs to do at a specific time of the day. Think about repairing a freeway, the best time to do it would be in the middle of the night. Each organ has a peak time of cleansing and detoxification (getting rid of senescent cells, heavy metals, chemicals, toxins, parasites and other metabolic waste products) as well as a time of building and regeneration. This is a time where new amino acids are required to build new proteins and tissues.

At a certain time of day, a particular organ may be cleansing and detoxing. Then exactly 12 hours later, there will be what’s called a “shunt” which refers to the opposite set of tasks for that organ.

What Happens at 3am?

From 1am to 3am happens to be “Liver Time” according to chronobiotic principles as well as Traditional Chinese Medicine. 1am to 3am is the “shunt” to 1pm and 3pm. During the PM hours your liver is in a building and regeneration phase. During 1am to 3am your liver is in a cleansing and detoxification phase.

If you didn’t know, the liver has over 500 functions which include but are not limited to creating bile to break down food, regulating hormones, converting thyroid hormone T4 to the active form T3, detoxing heavy metals and the list goes on forever.

I’ve seen chronic insomnia sufferers radically improve their sleep back to normal, just by doing a series of health practices that support their liver.

Some of these health practices for the liver include…

• Coffee enemas
• Rectal ozone insufflation
• Castor oil packs
• Liver and gallbladder flushes
• Doing inner work on healing anger (the liver is the organ of anger)
• Taking herbs like milk thistle, dandelion
• Doing a yearly liver cleanse

Take note if you wake up at exactly 3am or before.

If you wake up at 3am or after this is now “Lung Time”.  Lung time is from 3am to 5am and overlaps with the end of Liver Time. This transition period is significant in traditional Chinese medicine and other holistic practices for its restorative properties.

What can you take from this?

If you’re having sleep issues like waking up at 3am or dealing with insomnia in anyway, working on your lungs and liver would be high on the list. The side benefit is that if do a series of things to support your liver and lungs and it doesn’t help your sleep, it’ll help many other aspects of your overall health. You may experience more energy (due to regulating oxygen better through your lungs), better skin, improved digestion and more.

So not only are there zero side effects by doing something like a liver cleanse but at the very least (if it doesn’t help your sleep) it actually helps benefit your overall health in a multitude of other ways.

So keep in mind the timing of when you get up and what you’re feeling. I don’t generally recommend looking at a clock (or even opening your eyes) if you happen to wake up in the middle of the night. But if you use an Oura Ring or Whoop Band, it’ll track it for you, so you don’t have to look at any lighting when you wake up at 3am.

If you don’t have a sleep tracker like those devices and you want to look to see the time, I would only look at a clock that is analogue or if it’s digital make sure it’s a red digital clock and you wear these red glasses to block the blue light from our modern technology we all have in our bedrooms.

Circadian Rhythm Disruptions

If you’re waking up at 3am it definitely could be the result of a broken circadian rhythm. Your circadian rhythm is run through the light dark cycle of nature. You really should be watching the sunrise every single morning to set your circadian rhythm for the day.

Think of your circadian rhythm like a physical organ. It’s that important. If I extracted your liver, it wouldn’t take long to die. If I removed your circadian rhythm the same is true, with out it, we’d die very quickly.

Your circadian rhythm is regulated via photons of light (UVA, UVB, Red and Infrared) coming from the sun. This is why wearing sunglasses is not advised as a general health practice.

Many things can alter circadian rhythm like food, temperature, color, altitude, and more. It’s just that light is the PRIMARY DRIVER of suprachiasmatic nucleus which is your internal master clock inside the body.

Some quick tips on repairing your circadian rhythm is…

1. Watch the sunrise with no sunglasses, reading glasses or contact lenses (preferably while grounded)
2. Open windows if you’re inside
3. Get outside multiple times per day for a minute or two
4. Wear yellow blue blocking glasses during the day and using Iris Tech if on any tech devices
5. At sunset, wear orange blue blocking glasses
6. 2 to 3 hours before bed wear red blue blocking glasses
7. Take melatonin starting after sunset
8. Avoid eating after sunset

Low Blood Sugar

If your blood sugars become too low in the middle of the night (like say 3am) this is construed by the body to be a stressful event. Your body does not like stress of any kind. When your blood sugar falls, this happens a lot in people with hypothyroid issues (they don’t store a lot of sugar), their body relies on glucose stored in their liver for glycogen. They need glycogen for energy. Oddly enought it does take energy to sleep, which is a rather bizarre concept.

When there’s not enough glycogen then adrenaline and cortisol from y our adrenal glands begin to rise. Adrenalin normally peaks around 1 or 2am. If it rises too high,  you could wake up with a racing heart pounding in  your chest. If it stays risen, it will also increase your core body temperature which needs to be lower to reach deep sleep.

What I’ve found helpful nighttime snack is..

• A teaspoon of raw organic honey
• 1 once of water, with 1/8 teaspoon of sea salt (I also add iodine to it)

I usually take the water first and then the honey.

Hormonal Changes

If you have hypothyroid conditions this could cause body temperature to rise (which disturbs the depth of each sleep phase we enter) but also cause cortisol to spike at the wrong time. Cortisol is a hormone released by the outer cells of the adrenal glands in response to stress. Stress could be something as simple as a raise of core body temperature but 1 degree. Stress could be low blood sugar levels.

Cortisol is usually at its lowest from midnight to 4am. If you are waking up at 3am, it means your cortisol is high too early. Cortisol levels will rise naturally and gradually starting at 4am (which oddly enough is just before sunrise…I wonder why that is?). By waking up at 3am on a regular basis, you’re not repairing and restoring the adrenal glands (which are producing the excess cortisol that is waking you up!).

Do you see the cycle?

Here are some things you can do to repair adrenal health…

• Get into a habit of doing things at the same time of day, everyday. Eating, pooping, sleeping, light exposure etc.
• Consider taking a product called Cortisol Calm
• Other products to consider…
  • Licorice root
  • ashwagandha
  • tyrosine
  • glycine
  • chamomile
  • Seriphos

Frequent Urination

Many times people with sleep apnea mistakenly think that they woke up because of their need to pee. For men, they’ll think it’s because of an enlarged prostate (which could be a factor) and with women it’s related to hormones. But they’re waking up not because they have to pee but because the adrenaline created from not being able to sleep is a stress on the body and keeps blood going to your heart and brain.

When the blood does this the body creates a hormone called natriuretic peptide (ANP) which makes the body produce more urine. High levels of estrogen can be considered the primary cause of waking up to pee (nocturia). High estrogen seems to lower the stimulation threshold of your bladder, causing it to be more sensitive and prone to contractions. Magnesium is a great way to help with the sensitivity of the bladder to its ability to hold urine. Estrogen’s excitatory action might be partly due to increased hypotonic tissue water, which affects nerve thresholds almost instantaneously.

Conclusion

If you’re waking up at 3am on a regular basis, I would highly encourage you to find a good naturopathic doctor who can run a good 24 hour urine test to test your adrenal glands. Supporting your adrenal glands are going to be very helpful for regulating the hormones (like cortisol) that are causing you to wake up and pee.

Making sure your blood sugar is not out of balance would also be at the top of my list. And finally none of this matters if you’re not getting enough sunlight during the day and blocking blue light at night. It’s a comprehensive approach to dealing with waking up in the middle of the night.

Most likely it’s going to be a small combination of all of what’s mentioned in this article that will allow you to sleep through the night so you can wake up and feel rested.

Questions

1. How many days a week do you wake up at 3am at least once?
2. When you wake up, can you fall back asleep easily?
3. Did you ever think that waking up in the middle of the night could be due to your liver or adrenals not working properly?

Comment Below.