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Why snoozing your alarm in the morning is wrong?
How does this habit affect how you feel throughout the day?
The habit of setting the alarm in the morning is not as harmless as it seems. People in this way help themselves to wake up, but at the same time they make the body experience stress several times. This conclusion was reached by neuroscientists from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana (USA).
It is known from earlier research that an alarm clock can interrupt sleep cycles and thus make it difficult to wake up. Perhaps that is why the “snooze for N minutes” feature seems so attractive to many people in the morning, when they are still napping. The authors of the new study showed that 57% of participants use it and get out of bed only after 2-4 alarms. Scientists decided to find out how this can affect sleep and health.
The results of an experiment involving 450 people showed that the method of reducing sleep inertia does work, but it uses the body’s stress system to wake up. It also turned out that this form of morning “sleeping” is more characteristic of young people and women (they are 50% more likely to prolong their sleep), as well as “owls”.
- Those who reset the alarm several times had a higher heart rate, and doctors also found more signs of sleep disturbance.
- Their sleep before awakening was more superficial.
- In general, they experienced more severe fatigue than those who got up at the first call.
There were two main reasons for the delay:
- “I can’t wake up and get up after the first call”;
- “my bed is too comfortable to get up right away.”
The authors of the study add that chronic lack of sleep in modern people cannot be discounted. It is not yet possible to say unequivocally that the snooze button on the alarm clock is harmful, scientists say. But an alarm signal that pulls a person out of sleep is not useful to the body, this is a fact. And in order to minimize stress, it is better to make your sleep longer (from 8 hours), do not interrupt it, but fall asleep and always get up at the same time.
