The weekend’s over, it’s Monday morning, and suddenly it’s time to go back to another busy week of work. Your alarm clock goes off and almost instinctively – like a predator just waiting to pounce on its prey – you hit snooze.
You know that feeling all too well, and you’re not the only one. A 2014 study revealed that more than half of the American population admitted to regularly using the snooze button. It turns out that what we see as only a few extra minutes of “much-needed” sleep is doing us more harm than good.
So, what’s actually going on when we hit snooze?
A person reaching for the alarm clock at 7 a.m.
Source: The Dreaming Show
Most people who rely on alarm clocks experience sleep inertia, which is the state of grogginess and disorientation one immediately feels upon waking. The deeper the sleep stage you are waking up from, the more intensely you feel the effects of sleep inertia (and the more tempting it is to reach for that snooze button!). When we hit the snooze button and doze off again, our bodies are actually preparing to enter the start of another sleep cycle, making it nearly impossible to reach the final stage of the sleep cycle, REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, within a matter of minutes. This ends up leading us to feel even more exhausted throughout the day.
According to research and Human Sleep Science expert Professor Matthew Walker, being abruptly woken by an alarm clock triggers a “burst of activity [within the nervous system that causes] a spike in blood pressure and sudden acceleration in heart rate.” This means that repeatedly bargaining for more sleep is dangerously detrimental to our own hearts.
Is there anything I can do about it?
A woman basking in the sunrise. Source: Pixabay
If you’re only realizing this now, it’s not too late to turn around and reverse this impulsive snoozing habit. Luckily for you, the road to recovery isn’t a difficult one. Perhaps set only one alarm at a later time rather than having multiple alarms to avoid interrupting your sleep or consider sticking to a consistent sleep schedule to train your body’s natural wake mechanisms. There are even sunrise alarm clocks that replace the blaring alarms with gradually brightening light to help us ease out of our slumber more naturally.
While we may have plenty of excuses to get a few additional moments of sleep in the mornings, we should have no excuse when our health and well-being is on the line.
