Waking at three or four most nights is cortisol arriving early, not a sleep problem — morning light is the fastest way to reset the curve that's doing it.
Blood sugar that dips overnight can wake you as reliably as noise does. A small, carb-heavy dinner is a common and fixable cause.
Sleeping eight hours and still feeling flat isn't always a sleep deficit. Check whether it's a different kind of rest that's actually missing before adding more hours.
Sleep gets blamed for exhaustion that often isn't sleep's fault. The hours matter, but so does what happens around them — when cortisol rises, whether blood sugar holds steady overnight, how much real morning light reaches your eyes before a screen does. Fix the mechanics first; the hours you already have will do more than another hour would.
