Waking up at 3am every night isn’t random — and for me, the waking up at 3am liver connection turned out to be the missing piece. But let me back up.
Okay so.
I write about sleep. That’s literally my job. Have been doing it for eight years. And for two full years I woke up at 3am almost every single night and could not figure out why, which is — honestly kind of mortifying in retrospect.
Not the gentle kind of waking up either. Not the “oh I stirred, let me roll over” thing. I mean fully, completely awake. Heart doing something. Brain immediately like — great, let’s go, let’s think about that meeting from three weeks ago, let’s think about money, let’s think about everything you’ve said to everyone since 2009.
And I’d just lie there.
Sometimes for two hours.
I was so tired all the time that coffee stopped being a thing that helped — it was just something I did, like a ritual that used to mean something. I’d drag through the day, tell myself I’d go to bed early, fall asleep fine, and then. 3am. Every time.
My partner started doing this thing where she’d ask how I slept and I could tell she already knew the answer. That sucked. The work stuff was suffering too. I’d be in the middle of writing something and just… lose the thread completely. Stare at the screen. What was I doing. What is any of this.
And meanwhile I had a whole blog post up about how to reset sleep schedule that people kept sharing. Which. Great. Very helpful, Marcus. Super credible.
I tried stuff, obviously.
The chamomile tea before bed thing — did that for almost a month. Made it a whole ritual, real mug, honey, sat away from screens like some kind of person who has their life together. Did it help me feel calmer before bed? Maybe a little, genuinely, I think the apigenin does something. But 3am still showed up. Every time.
Started taking glycine for sleep after reading about it at 11pm one night (the irony of researching sleep aids when you should be sleeping is not lost on me). Glycine actually did help — I noticed I was falling asleep faster, and on the nights I did wake up it was easier to drift back. So I kept that going. But the 3am thing was still there underneath.
I tried the strict schedule stuff. Same wake time every morning, no naps, boring Sunday evening routines. Helped a bit with the falling asleep part. 3am didn’t care.
The Waking Up at 3am Liver Thing
At some point I was googling around and found some thread where someone mentioned waking up at 3am liver and I almost scrolled past it because it sounded like something that ends with “and that’s why you need this $90 supplement.”
But I was desperate. So I kept reading.
Turns out the actual explanation — stripped of all the wellness nonsense — is just blood sugar.
While you sleep, your liver is doing this whole quiet job of releasing stored glucose to keep your blood sugar stable through the night. You’re fasting, right, you haven’t eaten in hours, and your liver is just steadily releasing fuel so your brain keeps running. It’s boring metabolic maintenance. Nobody talks about it.
But if the stores run low — which happens if you ate dinner early, or ate light, or had some drinks, or just didn’t eat many carbs that day — the liver runs out of stuff to release. Blood sugar starts dropping. Your adrenal glands notice and respond by releasing cortisol and adrenaline to bring it back up.
You wake up.
Wired. Heart going a little. Not sure why.
The timing lands around 3am because that’s usually when you’re like five or six hours into fasting, which is right around when glycogen stores get low. And it overlaps with this natural waking up at 3am cortisol rise your body does anyway as part of prepping for morning — your HPA axis starts ramping up around 2-4am normally, it’s part of circadian rhythm, most people sleep through it fine. But if your blood sugar is already tanking and your system is already slightly activated, that gentle cortisol rise becomes a hard wake-up.
Two things hitting at once.
I’d read about the cortisol piece before but always thought of it as a stress thing. Never connected it to dinner timing. The waking up at 3am liver piece — the blood sugar regulation angle — was genuinely new to me and I felt kind of stupid for not knowing it. Like, I write about sleep. How did I not know this.
The night I tested it was a Wednesday.
I had an early thing the next morning so I was already annoyed about the whole situation. Ate dinner around six, nothing after. Woke up at 3am, same as always.
But this time instead of just lying there suffering I got up, ate crackers with almond butter, went back to bed.
Fell asleep in like twenty minutes.
Thought: fluke. Obviously a fluke.
Did the same thing the next night except I had the snack before bed, not after waking. Slept until 6.
I just kind of sat there in the morning going okay. Okay what.
I kept testing it for a couple weeks. Not every single night was transformed — I still woke up sometimes, especially on nights where I’d had wine late or work was really bad. But the pattern broke. The every-single-night thing stopped being every single night. That alone felt enormous after two years.
So what actually changed.
The snack before bed was the biggest thing by far. Something small with slow carbs and fat, maybe 30-40 minutes before sleep. Not a whole meal — just like, almond butter on a few crackers, or half a banana with peanut butter, something that gives your liver a bit of glycogen to work with instead of running dry at 3am. Dumb. Simple. Worked.
The alcohol timing thing I resisted admitting for a while. I wasn’t drinking much — a glass of wine most nights — but drinking it at 10pm was apparently enough to make things worse. Your liver spends a few hours processing alcohol and during that time it’s not great at the blood sugar maintenance job. The dip hits harder. So I moved drinks earlier, like before 7 if possible, and noticed a difference within a week or so. Still mildly annoyed about this. But fine.
The glycine for sleep I already mentioned. Kept taking it. Three grams in water before bed, just helps the whole falling asleep process feel less effortful, and I think it made me less sensitive to the 3am thing when it did happen. If you’re one of those people who lies there asking yourself why does it take me so long to fall asleep — genuinely try glycine before you buy anything fancier. The research on it is actually decent.
Morning light I added later and it helped with the broader sleep quality thing. Ten minutes outside early in the day, before screens. Helps set your circadian timing, which affects when melatonin kicks in, which affects how deep your sleep is and how loud that 3am cortisol ramp-up feels. I spent years going straight from bed to laptop in a dim apartment. Not helping myself.
And chamomile tea before bed is still in my routine, not because I think it’s fixing anything major but because it’s become a signal to my brain that the day is done. Routine matters. That’s it.
I do want to be clear about one thing
the “waking up at 3am liver” stuff online gets real weird real fast. Lots of detox content, lots of supplements, lots of people who want to sell you things. What I’m describing is the boring metabolic version: liver regulates overnight blood sugar, blood sugar dips, cortisol spikes, you wake up. A 2024 paper in Frontiers in Endocrinology found that mild nocturnal blood sugar drops were associated with more fragmented sleep even in people without diabetes. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. No cleanse needed.
Also — if you’re waking up at 3am and it comes with really intense heart stuff or anxiety that doesn’t settle, please actually see a doctor. Sleep apnea wakes people at consistent times. Actual hypoglycemia is a real medical thing. What I’m talking about here is for people who are generally fine but mysteriously awake at 3am and can’t figure out why.
I genuinely don’t know whether to laugh about the peanut butter crackers thing or be annoyed. Bit of both probably. Eight years writing about sleep, two years being terrible at sleeping, and a significant part of the answer was eating a snack before bed.
My past self would be so mad.
If you’re in the middle of this right now — the every night 3am thing, the exhaustion that goes all the way down, the lying there doing the sleep math — I’m sorry, it genuinely sucks, and it probably isn’t permanent. Try the boring stuff first. The boring stuff is usually at least part of it.
What’s been going on with your sleep? Has anything random actually helped you? Drop it in the comments, I always want to know what’s working for people.
Eight years writing about sleep and circadian stuff. Not a doctor, not medical advice, just someone who’s been in the weeds on this for a long time. If something feels off medically please see an actual professional.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your health routine.
