Dr. Michael Grandner

What happens is if you wake up and you're thinking, I'm stressed...

Your brain is reading signals like elevated heart rate, elevated respiratory rate, the endorphins of the muscles getting tense.

It's reading these physical signs.

And then because we live in the society we live in, stress is readily available.

We can fill that space really fast.

But what was happening was it wasn't the stress that woke you up.

It was that your breathing was starting to get...

a little bit constrained.

So then what happens is your airway tries to open itself up and it was trying and it wasn't, it wasn't successful.

So it tried harder, still wasn't successful, tries a little harder.

still not successful.

Worst case, you wake yourself up and you can wake up with a gas because you can breathe when you're awake just fine.

It's a different neuromuscular control system.

So as soon as you wake up, you sort of get that sudden awakening because you just got that little sort of a shot of adrenaline to wake you up.

And like if I just shot you up with a little bit of adrenaline during the night, you'd wake up and you would not be able to fall back asleep.

Your mind would start racing and you'd have all these physical signs.

But it wasn't the stress that woke you up.

The stress got superimposed on it later.

So when I have a patient who comes in and describes that sensation of I wake up in the middle of the night.

either because of stress or for no reason.