Create The Best Me

Racing Heart at 3 AM? Here's What's Really Happening

• Carmen Hecox • Episode 151

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In this episode, I dive deep into the surprising science behind midlife wake-ups with pounding heart, sweaty sheets, and a mind that just won’t stop. Forget what you’ve heard about anxiety or aging, this is a biological “fuel gauge error” and your body’s desperate call for help while you sleep.

I’ll reveal exactly why these wake-ups happen at 2 or 3 AM, the hormonal shifts that set you up for sudden adrenaline surges (not panic attacks!), and my three-part nighttime rescue protocol, including the one simple evening routine change that can finally break the cycle.

If you’re a woman over 50 struggling with sleep interruptions and worried about your health, tune in for practical solutions that prioritize restful sleep over outdated diet rules. Let's take the mystery and fear out of your 3 AM wake-up, together.

What You'll Learn:

  1. Why waking up with a racing heart at 3 AM is often caused by a drop in blood sugar, not anxiety or heart trouble
  2. How hormonal changes in midlife affect your liver’s ability to maintain steady blood sugar overnight
  3. The importance of a “safety snack” before bed and why it won’t sabotage your waistline
  4. How your sleep environment, especially temperature and bedding choice, can prevent adrenaline-triggered wake-ups
  5. A proven breathing technique (“physiological sigh”) to calm your body immediately when you wake with a racing heart

 

Music:  

Title: Relax by SyncLabMusic

 

Call to Action: 

Don’t forget to like, share, and comment below with your own sleep patterns, especially if your wake-up call has a regular time! And don’t forget to subscribe for more life-changing wellness insights. 

Want to dive deeper? Check out more resources and join our community.

 

📕 Resources: 

https://createthebestme.com/ep151

 

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https://www.buzzsprout.com/1949561/episodes/18414779 

 

#Cortisol #MenopauseSymptoms #MorningAnxiety #HeartPalpitations #Perimenopause #CreateTheBestMe #estrogen #progesterone #womenover50

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It starts the exact same way every single night. You fall asleep, fine. You are exhausted, but then it happens. You don't just wake up. You are jolted, awake.

It's 2:

58 AM The house is completely silent, but inside your chest, it sounds like a drum line. Your heart is pounding, you are sweating. Your mind instantly starts racing. And the first thought isn't, oh, I'm awake. The first thought is often, is something wrong with my heart? Am I dying? Is this a panic attack? If you're a woman over 50, and this is happening to you, I need you to listen very carefully right now. You're not going crazy. You're not having a heart attack. And most importantly, this is usually not anxiety. Here at Create The Best Me, we don't just talk about aging gracefully. We talk about practical solutions for things that scare us, and nothing is

scarier than waking up at 3:

00 AM. Today I'm going to show you that what you are feeling isn't an emotional problem, it's a biological fuel gauge error. Your body isn't attacking you. It's actually trying to save you. I'm going to explain exactly why this happens at 3:00 AM specifically, and then I'm going to give you my three part nighttime rescue protocol, including the one simple change to your evening routine that can stop the pounding heart before it even starts. So, why does this happen? And why does it always seem to happen at 2:00 AM and 4:00 AM? To understand this, we need to stop looking at your brain and start looking at your blood sugar. Here's the scenario.

You eat dinner at six or 7:

00 PM maybe if you're trying to be healthy, so you have a light salad, or maybe you skip carbs because you're watching your waistline.

You go to bed at, let's say, 10:

00 PM.

By 3:

00 AM it's been about eight to nine hours since you last ate. Your blood sugar levels are naturally dropping as you sleep. Now in our twenties or thirties, our bodies could handle this drop easily. Our liver had plenty of stored energy to trickle into our bloodstream to keep us stable until breakfast. But in midlife, thanks to fluctuating estrogen and progesterone, our sensitivity to insulin changes. Our liver's ability to store and release that energy isn't as efficient.

So, 3:

00 AM hits your blood sugar dips slightly too low. Your brain, which needs glucose to survive, senses this drop and says" emergency, we're running out of fuel!" And your brain needs to get that blood sugar up fast. So it sends a signal to your adrenal glands to release a surge of two hormones, cortisol and adrenaline. Think about that. Adrenaline is the "fight or flight" hormone. It is designed to help us run from a bear. So your body dumps a shot of run from the bear juice into your blood while you're fast asleep in a dark room. This is why you wake up with a pounding heart. You aren't anxious about your to-do list. You are having a physiological reactions to adrenaline. The anxiety you feel after you wake up? That's just your brain trying to make sense of the physical sensation. Your brain feels the racing heart and thinks, " Wow, we must be really worried about something," and it starts looking for a problem to solve. But the root cause wasn't worry. It was fuel cash. Now that we know the "why," that this is blood sugar crash, the solution becomes obvious. We have to prevent the crash. This brings us to strategy number one. This is going to be controversial because it's going against most every diet rule you've been told for the last 20 years. I want you to eat before bed. This is called "Safety Snack." I know, I know. We've been programmed to believe that eating after 7:00 PM makes you fat. Or maybe you're practicing intermittent fasting and you close your eating window early. But here's the truth for women in midlife: If fasting for 14 hours causes

a cortisol strike at 3:

00 AM that wakes you up and wrecks your sleep, that stress is doing more damage to your waistline than a few calories ever would. Cortisol is the enemy of weight loss. Sleep is the best fat burner we have. If we have to choose between perfect fasting window and a full night's sleep, I take sleep anytime. So, what is a Safety Snack? We're not talking about a bowl of ice cream or a bag of chips. Those will spike your sugar and make the crash worse. We need a small combination of complex carbs and high quality fat or protein. The carb gives us a slow release of fuel. The fat and protein anchors it so it lasts all night. Here are three of my favorites.

The classic:

half a banana with a tablespoon of almond butter.

The savory:

a small handful of walnuts and a few organic apple slices.

The simple:

a few ounces of leftover chicken or turkey. Try this for three nights, about 30 to 45 minutes before you go to sleep. Have a small Safety Snack. You are essentially filling up the gas tank just enough so that the empty

fuel light doesn't flash on at 3:

00 AM. Strategy, number two, addressing the second biggest trigger

for the 3:

00 AM wake up heat. Even if you don't think you are having hot flashes, your body's temperature naturally fluctuates at night. In perimenopause, our internal thermostat gets a little broken. When your body temperature rises too high, it triggers a very similar danger signal to the brain as low blood sugar. It releases and you guessed it, adrenaline and cortisol to wake up so you can cool down. So if you're waking up kicking the covers off, or if you just feel buzzing and hot, we need to fix the environment. Here's a checklist, I use.

The ambient temperature:

Your room needs to be cooler than you think. 65 to 67 degrees Fahrenheit is the sweet spot for menopausal sleep.

The layering system:

Stop using one giant heavy duvet. You need layers, A sheet, a light cotton blanket, and then a heavy throw at the foot of your bed. This gives you control. When you wake up hot, you can peel back one layer without freezing. When you wake up cold, because the sweat dries, you can pull one up.

Material matters:

If you are sleeping in polyester or cheap satin, you are sleeping in a plastic wrap. You need 100% cotton, bamboo, or linen. Your skin needs to breathe. If you combine the safety snack to stabilize the fuel with a cool room to stabilize the temperature, you eliminate 90% of the biological triggers that jolt you awake. But what if it happens anyways? You did the snack, you cooled the room, but here you are, it's

3:

15 AM and your heart is racing. Strategy number three to the rescue protocol. The biggest mistake we make in this moment is we lay there and worry about being awake. We look at the clock.

We do the math:

" If I fall asleep now, I'll get three hours... oh no, now I'll only get two hours." This is called the "Second Arrow." The first arrow is waking up. The second arrow is the stress you pile on top of it. We need to turn off the adrenal alarm manually. We are going to do a technique right now called the Physiological Sigh. This is scientifically proven to offload CO2 and tell your heart to slow down. I want you to try this with me right now. We are going to take two inhales through the nose, one big one, and then a tiny sip of air on top, and then a long, slow exhale through our mouth. Ready? Inhale Now sip a little more air, a long, slow exhale out the mouth. Like you're blowing through a straw. Let's do it again. Inhale. Now a sip, a little more air and then a long, slow exhale out our mouth. Let's do it again. Inhale. Now sip a little more air. And a long, slow exhale out of our mouth. Let's do it again. Inhale. Now sip a little more air, and now a long, slow exhale out of our mouth. Do you feel that? That drop in your shoulders? That is your nervous system shifting from" Fight or Flight" to "Reset and Digest." When you wake up with that racing heart, do 10 of these immediately. Don't check your phone. Don't check the clock. Just breathe.

I want you to remember this:

Your body's changing and it requires a new owner's manual. The thing that worked at 30 doesn't work at 50, and that's okay. You aren't broken because you need a bedtime snack. You aren't broken because you need to breathe at 3:00 AM. You are just evolving. Try the Safety Snacks tonight. Set your thermostat to 65.

And let me know in the comments:

Does your wake-up call happen at a specific time?

Is this always at 3:

00 AM or is it at 2:00 AM? I wanna hear your patterns. If you would like to learn more about this topic, you can find that information at createthebestme.com/ep151. And if you're looking for what to do when you actually get out of bed, to start your day without anxiety, you need to watch this video right here where I walk you through my anti-stress morning routine. Let's work together in creating the best version of ourselves, and I will see you in the next video. Thank you for watching. Catch you next week. Bye for now.