Getting up early in the morning is no easy task for plenty of people. That's why alarms are important-they ensure that you wake up at your desired time in the morning. However, nobody can deny how tempting it is to try and squeeze in a few more minutes of sleep.
About 57 percent of people snooze in the morning, which is defined as needing multiple alarms to wake up. If you set a single alarm and snooze it repeatedly or set several alarms at regular intervals until the time you absolutely need to gel up, you are a snoozer. Waking up on the first alarm is commonly recommended, but does it really make a difference if you are woken up by one alarm compared to several ones?
In a recent Sleep study, researchers examine how snoozing affects an individual's health and sleep. According to the study,people snooze for a variety of reasons. Most of the participants said that they just can't get up with only the first alarm. Some say they snooze because they feel comfortable in bed,while others do it because they feel less tired when they do get up.
The participants wore an activity tracker for the study, which allowed the authors to observe that snoozing is generally associated with lighter sleep in the last hour before waking up and a higher resting heart rate across the night. The study found that snooring isn't necessarily associated with decreased sleep duration,increased sleepiness or more naps. This suggests that there might not be much of difference between waking up on the first alarm or the subsequent ones when it comes to shorter sleep duration or daytime sleepiness. What might matter more is whether you are sleep-deprived in the first place or not.
Snoozing feels good because there is that pleasant feeling of falling back to sleep. However,the brain takes time to wake up and snoozing can interrupt that process, leaving you groggy for hours later, says DanielA.Baronem, associate medical director of the Weill Cornell Center for sleep Medicine and author of Let's Talk about Sleep. He suggests setting an alarm as late as possible and just waking up then, which allows you to get more sleep.
Practicing proper sleep hygiene may also help individuals avoid feeling tired and groggy. Mattingly recommends establishing a comfortable sleeping environment, which includes ensuring the absence of light during sleep forming regular sleep and wake routines on weekdays and weekends, and having daylight exposure during and after waking up.“The best advice is to sleep as much as your body needs, which allows the body to avoid grogginess all on its own.” Mattingly adds.