Hi Alex - It's often said that when you wake up in the middle of the night and are unable to go back to sleep, one cause can be hypoglycemia or low blood sugar. When blood glucose goes too low, the body goes into alert (adrenaline response) because it's the job of the body to protect the brain... which needs glucose to function. So.. the awakening is a stimulus to do something that adds glucose quickly.
One of my early holistic MDs also tended to become hypoglycemic during sleep and he always talked about his solution which was to keep a container of yogurt on the nightstand to eat immediately when he did wake up. The yogurt can be left unrefrigerated for a while so he felt it was a safe way to get in a fairly well-balanced food with carbs, fat, and protein. That practice enabled him to get back to sleep so that he was functional for work the next day.
The other suggestion he offered was to eat a balanced snack ..carbs, protein and fat... 2 hours before bedtime...rather than making your last intake of food around 6 or 7 in the evening. He felt that fast metabolizers ran out of blood glucose too quickly and that stimulated the awakening because of the adrenaline surge. That was the approach I used to overcome adrenal burnout and nocturnal hypoglycemic episodes which also triggered my AF events until I got the hypoglycemia under control.
Jackie
