@drgreghealth: Today I want to talk about why you keep waking up at 3am and cannot sleep through the night. I've been a functional medicine doctor for more than 25 years, and this specific pattern usually has a specific, fixable cause. Here is what is actually happening. Overnight, if your blood sugar drops too low, which happens easily if dinner was carb-heavy with little protein or if you had an evening drink, your body treats that drop as an emergency. It releases cortisol and adrenaline to push your blood sugar back up. Those are stress hormones. They are not sleep hormones. That is what pulls you out of deep sleep at around the same time, night after night. Layer on an already dysregulated HPA axis from chronic stress, and that nighttime cortisol spike becomes even more pronounced. The fix starts before bed, not at 3am. A small protein and fat snack in the evening. Easing up on or eliminating alcohol. And addressing the chronic stress load that is keeping your whole stress response system on high alert. Is it always the same time for you? Find the root. Heal the whole.

Dr. Greg

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Wednesday 21 October 2026 15:30:33 GMT