What Are the Common Causes of Broken Sleep Every Night?

Broken sleep means that a person's sleep cycle is fragmented because they keep waking up during the night. While not as dangerous as chronic sleep deprivation, prolonged broken sleep can have many negative effects on both physical and mental health. That's why it's important to identify the underlying cause if you're experiencing this problem and take steps to eliminate it.

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5 Interrupted Sleep Causes

1. High Stress Levels

When you're stressed, your body increases the release of cortisol as a means of adaptation. However, high levels of cortisol can interfere with sleep quality, causing wakefulness or difficulty staying asleep throughout the night.

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2. Environmental Factors

Noise, extreme heat or cold, and bright lights can negatively impact your ability to fall and stay asleep. Adapting your sleep environment to your ideal temperature and levels of noise and light can help ward off broken sleep every night and promote rest.

3. Medical Conditions & Medications

Various medical conditions can also impact sleep quality and be the reason behind broken sleep. For example, restless leg syndrome can cause difficulty falling and staying asleep, while sleep apnea can cause waking up during the night.

What's more, some medications can have side effects that disrupt your sleep patterns, such as steroids and amphetamines.

4. Lifestyle Choices

Caffeine and alcohol consumption has notoriously bad effects on sleep quality. Alcohol is often used to help fall asleep, but it interferes with the sleep cycle and results in waking up during the night. On the other hand, caffeine is known to promote wakefulness.

5. Anxiety and Depression

Both anxiety and depression have sleep disturbances as a common symptom. Waking up early in the morning is common with depression, causing incomplete sleep cycles. Meanwhile, anxiety is often associated with difficulty falling asleep as well as middle-of-the-night wakefulness.

» Tired of waking up every night? Here's how to improve sleep

Rest Assured You Can Fix Your Sleep

Understanding the causes of broken sleep is essential so you can address your problem accordingly and find a suitable solution. Seeking professional help, resolving mental health issues, and making lifestyle changes can help stop the cycle of broken sleep and improve your overall sleep quality.