Sometimes my sleep chart shows a bunch of disturbances, but I don’t remember waking up. What’s going on?
Sleep disturbances are brief interruptions in sleep that are often too short for you to remember. They’re not full awakenings but rather micro-arousals — short spikes in physiological activity, often without full consciousness. Most of these disturbances will only last for a few seconds during lighter stages of sleep, and your brain doesn’t fully “wake up.” It is very normal for individuals to experience 10-20 of these in a given night, so don’t be scared if these are the numbers you are hitting!
Common causes of a higher-than-normal number of sleep disturbances are high stress (especially around bedtime), alcohol, caffeine, or heavy meals close to sleep, vigorous exercise close to bed, or noise and light in your sleep environment. You can try logging these items in your WHOOP journal to monitor their impact, if there is one or multiple that you expect might be the cause. Outside of that, keeping your sleep schedule consistent - via monitoring your Sleep Consistency score - can help you achieve more restful sleep. So that is another lever you can pull to reduce disturbances over time!