A sleep expert says that people waking up in the night may unknowingly be doing several things that 'prolong the problem' and 'make it feel much worse'. As the issue carries on, sufferers could end up feeling "absolutely exhausted" throughout the day.

Most people will experience sleep issues at some point in their lives. The NHS Inform website claims that roughly one in three adults across the UK regularly experience sleep disturbances, including difficulty falling asleep, lying awake at night, and waking up several times during the night.

Former NHS practitioner Kathryn Pinkham is an insomnia specialist and founder of The Insomnia Clinic. She received training from the health service in cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia and has since grown her clinic to include trained therapists, an online course and corporate services.

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On the Body Composition Coach podcast, she said that 'sleep maintenance insomnia' is a relatively common problem causing people to wake during the night. Typical triggers include anxiety, chronic pain and hormonal changes - but this can quickly begin to impact everyday life, reports the Express.

Kathryn said: "It's a combination of not having enough momentum to sleep through the night, so we wake up at three o'clock in the morning. When we wake up at three, most people check the time, which triggers our minds to start wondering if we've had enough sleep and to panic about tomorrow.

"What happens is that, at three o'clock in the morning, if we become vigilant to the fact that we are awake, then our body will think this is a problem - and it will have to respond as though there is a problem, so that fight or flight is kicking in."

Kathryn explained that the condition typically leaves sufferers "absolutely exhausted," but unable to break the internal rhythm their body has learnt to accept as 'normal'. The sleep expert said our bodily systems are quick to identify and stick to a pattern, but cannot tell between good and bad patterns - they simply "know the ones that we repeat"

Factors that can trigger 'middle-of-the-night' insomnia include psychological elements such as anxiety, stress, and depression. Alternatively, the root cause can be physical, including chronic pain or sleep apnoea.

Certain lifestyle decisions may be contributing to these early-hour disturbances, the specialist warns, including consuming caffeine or alcohol during the evening. Maintaining an irregular sleep routine can also spark these problems.

According to the NHS website, insomnia is a "regular problem" with sleep instead of just a one-off 'bad night'. Fortunately, the condition usually improves without medication and comes down to adjusting your sleep habits. You may have insomnia if you regularly:

• find it hard to go to sleep


• wake up several times during the night


• lie awake at night


• wake up early and cannot go back to sleep


• still feel tired after waking up


• find it hard to nap during the day even though you're tired


• feel tired and irritable during the day


• find it difficult to concentrate during the day because you're tired

Kathryn explained that the answer lies in correcting that unhelpful pattern rather than attempting to remove the trigger itself, as it's often not straightforward to resolve something physical or mental. She stressed that recognising the pattern your body has established is crucial to re-training the body clock into a more suitable rhythm that prevents unwanted 3am wake-ups.

She said: "You've set a pattern that's not working... We're changing that behaviour that is keeping that pattern going. Whatever starts the fire, which is the whatever triggers the insomnia problem, isn't the thing that we're focusing on because that's not what is keeping it going. It's how we behave around sleep and how we feel around sleep."

According to the NHS website, insomnia patients are sometimes offered cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) through face-to-face sessions with a therapist or via an online self-help programme. This can help change the thoughts and behaviours preventing restful sleep.

GPs now rarely prescribe sleeping tablets to treat insomnia. Sleeping pills can have serious side effects, and patients can become dependent on them. Sleeping pills are only prescribed for a few days or weeks at most if the insomnia is particularly severe and other treatments have failed.