Question: How do we wake up?

Hayley Moulding answered on 14 Mar 2016:

That is a very good question, and the answer is very difficult! We wake up because we have rhythms in our bodies and hormones in our bodies which go up and down. We have lots of different rhythms with body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate and your sleep being different ones! When we wake up, we usually wake up in the morning, when the sun has got up and when it is light. This is because there is a hormone in our bodies called ‘melatonin,’ Melatonin is at a high level when the sun rises, so makes us more awake to wake up. Also, we have another hormone called ‘cortisol’. This makes us excited for the day and motivates us to get up and do something with our day. The activity in our brains also changes when it is morning compared to the night. So instead, we are sleeping a lot lighter in the morning and that means we can be woken up from our sleep easier.