Why can’t I get a swing on this thing!!!

I have this recurring dream - I’m playing golf, trying to hit a shot but in my backswing I keep hitting a tree branch, or I’m in a building and have to deal with a low ceiling or I have to thread it through a window - I mean its ridiculous. It drives me crazy because my group is already on the green and I’m about to forfeit the hole.

It stresses me out!

I started to try to figure out when I get this dream and it's when I’m facing a tough decision. I also noticed it happens around 3am.

So I had to figure out if my body was broken or if I could fix this. Good news - there is hope - for your sleep, and my backswing.

Your Body Has a 3am Alarm — And It Might Be Stuck

More than one in three people wake up during the night at least three times per week. Most blame the mattress. The room temperature. Their phone. Getting older.

But here’s what most people don’t realize: waking up at 3am isn’t random. It’s biology.

Your cortisol — the hormone that gets you out of bed in the morning — doesn’t wait for your alarm. It starts rising around 3am as part of your body’s natural cortisol awakening response. In a healthy system, this is a gentle nudge. You don’t even notice it.

But if your nervous system is already stuck in overdrive — and after last week’s newsletter, a number of you told me yours is — that gentle nudge becomes a fire alarm.

What’s Actually Happening at 3am

When your stress response is chronically elevated, the 3am cortisol rise doesn’t ease you toward waking. It jolts you awake. A 2024 clinical study found that in chronic insomnia patients, every single nighttime awakening was accompanied by an instant spike in cortisol. Not gradual. Instantaneous. Your stress system is literally hijacking your sleep in real time.

And then the domino effect starts:

Cortisol spikes your blood sugar. Your liver dumps glucose into your bloodstream — fuel for a threat that doesn’t exist. This is why some people wake up wired at 3am with their heart racing and mind spinning.

Cortisol suppresses melatonin. The very hormone that keeps you asleep gets bulldozed by the stress response. So now you’re not just awake — your body has chemically shut down its own sleep system.

Your brain goes into problem-solving mode. With cortisol flooding and blood sugar spiking, your prefrontal cortex fires up. Now you’re lying in bed at 3:17am running worst-case scenarios about a meeting that’s two weeks away.

This isn’t insomnia in the way most people think of it. You can fall asleep just fine. You just can’t stay asleep. Researchers call this sleep maintenance insomnia, and it’s one of the most common — and most misunderstood — sleep disorders in adults.

Your Dreams Are Data

Here’s something I didn’t expect to find. When cortisol is elevated during REM sleep — the phase where you dream — it literally distorts your memories inside the dream. It makes stress dreams more vivid, more real, more threatening than they actually are.

That recurring dream where you’re falling? Where you’re late? (Where I can’t swing my stinking golf club?!!!) Where something’s chasing you? That’s not random. That’s your subconscious processing something unresolved. Research shows that recurring stress dreams are strongly correlated with elevated cortisol and unresolved emotional tension.

For me, it’s my golf dream. I’m standing over the ball, ready to swing, but there’s always something in the way. And it only shows up when I’m facing a tough decision about which direction to go.

Once I named that pattern, the dream started losing its power.

This Isn’t Just About Sleep

If you read last week’s newsletter about your nervous system, you know the pattern. When your stress response is stuck on, it shows up everywhere: your weight, your mood, your digestion, your patience. Now add sleep to that list.

Because here’s the cruel irony: poor sleep makes stress worse, and stress makes sleep worse. Chronic sleep deprivation increases cortisol production, inflammatory markers, and insulin resistance. Which raises cortisol further. Which fragments sleep further.

It’s a cycle. And you don’t break a cycle by buying a new mattress.

The Takeaway

• Name the stew. If you’re waking up at 3am, something is unresolved. Not always something dramatic — sometimes it’s a decision you’ve been postponing, a conversation you haven’t had, or a tension you’re carrying. Before bed, take 2 minutes and write down the thing you’re stewing on. Just naming it reduces cortisol. You don’t have to solve it — you just have to stop pretending it’s not there.

• Extend the exhale. When you wake up in the middle of the night, your nervous system is in alarm mode. The fastest way to flip the switch: breathe in for 4 seconds, out for 6–8 seconds. That longer exhale activates your vagus nerve — the brake pedal for your stress response. Do it for 2 minutes. Don’t pick up your phone. Don’t check the time. Just breathe.

• Get outside early. Morning sunlight within the first hour of waking resets your circadian clock and helps regulate your cortisol curve for the entire day. Two or more hours of natural daylight has been shown to improve deep sleep duration by up to 30%. Your body was built for the sun, not the screen.

Here’s what I want you to hear

If you’re waking up at 3am, you’re not broken. You’re not getting old. You’re not bad at sleep.

Your body is trying to tell you something. The same way it talks to you during the day through tension, through fatigue, through that knot in your stomach — at night, it talks to you by pulling you out of sleep.

Start listening. Name the thing. Breathe through it. Get some sun.

Your body wants to rest. You just have to help it feel safe enough to stay there.

-Jared

P.S. - My wife has a beautiful newsletter where she shares her perspectives on tending the land, recipes, women’s health and more.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. 👋

I write this newsletter each week because I feel my best when my body, mind and soul are all healthy. I want the same for you. If you feel like you’ve seen something valuable here, please do me a favor and forward this newsletter to a friend or let me know what you think by replying to this email or texting me - (310) 879-8441

P.S. - This newsletter does not provide medical advice. The content, such as graphics, images, text, and all other materials, is provided for reference and educational purposes only. The content is not meant to be complete or exhaustive or to be applicable to any specific individual's medical condition.

Here are a few other links to things that have changed my life:

Whoop - Track your HRV and REM Sleep

Function Health - Optimize Your Health via 160+ BioMarkers

Here are a few topics I think you’ll love if you haven’t checked them out before:

How to Breathe for Better Health

How to Supercharge Your Sleep

The Power of the Sauna

Sources

1. Clow, A., et al. (2010). The cortisol awakening response: More than a measure of HPA axis function. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 35(1), 97–103. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4006295/

2. Hirotsu, C., et al. (2015). Interactions between sleep, stress, and metabolism. Sleep Science, 8(3), 143–152. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4688585/

3. Guyon, A., et al. (2021). Chronic stress and nocturnal cortisol elevation disrupt sleep architecture. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 126, 105150. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306453021000548

4. Pallayova, M., et al. (2007). Nocturnal hypoglycemia and sleep quality. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 92(8), 2899–2903. https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/92/8/2899/2598308