I wake up often at night

[elzer]

I'm a 56 year old male.  I've never used drugs, alcohol or had coffee.  I'm in good health and exercise often.  I'm not an anxious person at all.  I always wake up several times at night.  As I said, I exercise often and almost always read in bed before going to sleep.  I seldom need to get up for a bathroom visit at night.  Why do I wake up so ofter? (Probably between 6 and 12 times a night.)

[elzer]

Jerry - thanks for writing.  In answer to your questions, no.  No anxiety, sweats, breathing, dreams, etc.  I just wake up a lot.  The best way to describe it is that I am physically uncomfortable and feel I need to change positions.  It is similar to going to a movie for me, I have to move every so often.  I've never really thought about this until recently.  It didn't occur to me that my sleep might be abnormal.  Therefore I don't really remember how long this has been going on.  Could be decades.  I'll keep investigating.  If you have any more insight I'd love to hear it.

Eric

[Jerry_NJ]

I hope you can add to your good life style a regular/annual check up with your doctor.  It that turns up nothing, likely the case in my experience, you'll at least know it isn't some underlying physical problem.

That said, I believe I wake up no more than 3 times a night and can usually make use of the wake up to use the toilet - I'm much older than you and have the classic prostate condition.  Still, when I wake up it is always with some what I call trouble mare in my mind.  Can you associate you waking up with dreaming?  Does it take long to go back to sleep?

Do you have any symptoms when you wake up, sweat, shortness of breath, high heart rate, or since of suffocating?  I'm just going off the top of my recall the list isn't complete.  If yes to one or more of items listed you may have a breathing problem, even apnea.  In my case I ask my wife, who has trouble sleeping, if she notices anything when she is awake and I am asleep that looks like I'm not breathing.  I believe a secondary trigger for my waking up and dreaming is mental, anxiety that comes to some of us when we reach the point we can on longer deny we are old, no not getting old, old.  At your age I was still doing will with denial that I was even getting older, I used to say "I'm not getting old, I'm getting better, or stronger" as I when through a improved life style from 45 to 65 where I had quite smoking and took up regular exercise including running at which I was in fact getting better, at least until my mid 60s when aging started slowing me down physically, more exercise didn't make me stronger.

I go through my "story" mostly to give you some data on a person who has a wake up too much problem, but being older, and can think of things that my contribute to my situation.