“The Body Doesn’t Get Used to Anxiety”: A Somnologist Explains Why Waking Up to Air-Raid Sirens Ruins Sleep Even After Eight Hours in Bed

Nighttime air-raid alerts and shelling have become an everyday reality for millions of Ukrainians. Even if a person formally spends eight hours in bed, the constant interruptions turn rest into an exhausting process. Somnologist, PhD in medicine, neurologist and psychotherapist Anastasiia Shkodina explained exactly how sleep fragmentation affects the brain and the body, why it is impossible to get used to nighttime awakenings, and what actually helps you recover after a sleepless night.

Sleep fragmentation: why “eight hours” is not always eight hours

Every awakening caused by a siren or shelling is a broken sleep cycle. According to Shkodina, the deep sleep phase and REM sleep suffer the most: the first is responsible for physical recovery, the second for emotional processing of information and memory formation. Even if a person has “accumulated” the required number of hours in bed, sleep broken into fragments is close in effect to full sleep deprivation. In addition, the glymphatic system, which clears metabolic waste from the brain at night, does not have time to work properly. That is why the key indicator is not the time spent in bed, but the time during which the body was actually in restorative sleep.

Why the body does not “get used” to the alarms

One common myth is that over time a person adapts to nighttime awakenings and stops noticing them. Shkodina categorically refutes this: the body does not get used to it; it merely learns to react more efficiently, and these are fundamentally different mechanisms. Any sudden awakening triggers a fight-or-flight response: cortisol is released, the heartbeat accelerates, and the body mobilizes. Over time, the brain begins to recognize potentially dangerous hours and wakes the person in advance — some people even hear a siren where there is none. This is not a malfunction but an adaptation to a real environment; however, such adaptation chronically exhausts the body, even when there is no immediate threat.

How to fall asleep after the all-clear: what works and what does not

There is no universal instruction for falling asleep quickly after an alarm — and this is not an excuse, it is physiology. Every person has their own stress response: what calms one person may heighten anxiety in another. The main task, according to the somnologist, is not to try to “calm down by willpower” but to give the nervous system a signal of safety. Warmth, dimmed light, and a familiar pre-sleep ritual — for example, warm water followed by cool water — can help. It is fundamentally important: checking the news or your phone right after the all-clear is not calming, but a new wave of stress layered on top of the previous one. Breathing exercises, relaxation, and white noise are also not a universal solution: box breathing helps some people but irritates others; white noise masks unpredictable sounds for some but becomes an irritant in itself for others. There is only one criterion of effectiveness — whether a specific technique genuinely gives the nervous system a sense of “it is safe now.”

Daytime naps, coffee, and one habit that helps everyone

Daytime naps can compensate for nighttime sleep loss, but with caveats. A short nap of 10–20 minutes is optimal: it restores attention without plunging you into deep sleep, after which you may wake up feeling groggy. If you managed to sleep less than four hours at night, a longer daytime nap of about an hour to an hour and a half is acceptable, but strictly before 14:00–15:00, otherwise it will close the loop of sleep debt and affect the next night. A single cup of coffee in the morning after a sleepless night is acceptable and provides brief alertness; however, daily “masking” of chronic sleep debt with caffeine does not work: the fatigue does not go anywhere, it is merely postponed. If you had to choose one habit closest to universal, Shkodina recommends bright light in the first half of the day, especially after a sleepless night. This is a simple signal to the brain that “a new day has begun,” and it helps stabilize the internal clock even when the sleep rhythm is disrupted.