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Dr. Michael Breus

Dr. Michael Breus

Clinical psychologist and board-certified sleep medicine specialist known as "The Sleep Doctor"; founder of The Sleep Doctor and sleep education brand with expertise in chronotype-based sleep solutions.

Jun 30, 2026

14:23
Yes.
14:23
Why? Because cortisol is like basically getting adrenaline in the middle of the night, and so, boom, it wakes you up.
14:29
Guess what time it seems to hit? Somewhere between 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning is when we start to see this cortisol hit, which is interesting because it's oftentimes a reaction to either lower estrogen or lower progesterone or irregular estrogen and progesterone.
14:43
So one thing that we have happen is basically somebody pushes the awake button in the middle of the night, which is called cortisol.
14:50
So that's one thing that we know that happens.
14:52
A second thing that we know that happens, I think there's a blood sugar surge.
14:56
We see this happen a lot, especially coming out of the last REM period.

42 MINS LATER

57:10
Yeah.

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