Insomnia comes in many forms one of which causes sleepers to wake up far too early unable to fall back asleep not a good way to kick off your day so here with some tips to battling early morning insomnia is wsj reporter Andrea Peterson welcome Andrea great to see you so psychologists have a specific name for this right they call it early morning awakening and who tends to suffer from it everyone tends to suffer from it at one time or another it can run in families there are actually certain genes that can make someone more prone to it also it tends to become more common as people age it particularly hits those over 60 and so it's characterized by not having too much trouble falling asleep but waking up far too early what like around 4:00 a.m. right an hour 2 hours before you would like to and you're not able to go back to sleep now do doctors know exactly what causes this well there's a couple of reasons why this could happen it is actually a symptom of depression so one thing people should definitely do if they are starting to have early morning awakenings should get screened for depression because that that does seem to be an issue that will cause this also as people get older our circadian rhythms change and actually our whole body clock which enter circadian it's a body clock that sort of dictates our sleep wake wake cycle and that tends to give to be pushed earlier so people have it sleep you're you know right after dinnertime and then they wake up really early and I can cause them you know a mismatch with normal sleep times and I love that in your piece you also find that there are some some recent findings that show that it could be related to a certain part of our brain that's right right those researchers in Europe actually found that people who had a lower density in part of the orbit orbital frontal cortex which is a part of the brain actually that's associated with sensing comfort and you can understand why that might make evolutionary exactly need to feel comfortable enough that's right to fall asleep right so they did find a link between that and in particular the kind of insomnia that's associated with early-morning awakenings so if you do have that kind of body clock insomnia is there a way of rectifying this perhaps with light therapy that's right you can actually shift your the key is to sort of shift your body clock later and what you need to do first of all is stay awake long enough to really hit you want your optimal bedtime to be and yes giving yourself exposure to bright light you know what those goofy light therapy boxes are actually there's new goggles that actually have lights sort of that will beam light into your eyes I started three seven o'clock or so if you want if you're aiming for a bedtime at around 10:00 and wait time around 6:00 yes around 7 o'clock will be fine also getting some exercise in the early evening is a good idea as well because that gets your adrenaline pumping it basically activates ok keep you keep you up later I talked to one doctor who a patient of hers scheduled a phone call with her sister every evening and sort of having that obligation made her stay awake and what about changing your TV watching habit that's a yes I talked to another doctor who said you know a lot of people what happens is they don't intend to fall asleep but they sit in front of the TV and of course you know enough they're completely out and so he just adjusts people's watch TV standing up or dragging a very uncomfortable kitchen chair into the living room and watching TV that keeps you up keeps it up now finally if you do wake up at 4 a.

M. and you look at the clock and you think oh my gosh I need to go back to sleep what should you do don't look at the clock first because if you do you're basically gonna you know stress yourself out and you know start doing the math and thinking how long before your alarm right off so yeah so try to avoid looking at the clock well if you're laying there you know you can lay there and see if you fall back asleep but as soon as you start getting frustrated or start thinking oh my gosh I'm not gonna go back to sleep get up because then you then you basically it's a self-fulfilling prophecy so you get up do something else low-key if you get sleepy again then go back to bed and try to try to sleep what if you've got this sort of like mental to-do list going through well one doctor I talked to she had suggestions a lot of people miss when they do wake up at 4 a.

M. they will start worrying got everything that their should be doing and haven't been doing so she suggests actually that people schedule those nagging things on their to-do list for the night before so that when you wake up in the morning you don't have that help keep you up longer I do them get them done and you won't have those like that Christmas list that everybody Andrea Peterson thank you so much for that thank you.