Your sleep schedule, morning routine, and the way you wake up set the tone for your entire day. Your circadian rhythm, also called the internal clock of your body, is responsible for the quality and quantity of sleep you receive. It is also extremely sensitive to changes in your routine as well as rest when you wake up. That’s why the unusual thing you can do, longing, hit the snooze button on your alarm in the morning – it can negatively affect your circadian rhythm and take away your whole day.
“An irregular circadian rhythm can have a negative effect on a person’s ability to sleep and function properly,” according to Harvard Health.
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You snooze, You lose
“It does not matter how bad your sleep was on a particular night, you still have to get up at the same time every morning,” said Deirdre McSwiney, sleep technician and cognitive behavioral therapist for Insomnia. The hard shoulder. “This business of lying or having the luxury of pressing that snooze button – which I think was the worst invention ever – is not good for you.”
Most alarm clocks as smartphones are standard snoozing time up to nine minutes. It is not clear why manufacturers of the early alarm clock chose this as the perfect snooze increase, but it has remained the standard to this day. Spending an extra nine minutes on a snooze may not seem harmful, but it can have detrimental effects on the quality of your sleep.
To wake up efficiently and “to the right of the bed”, you need to get up at the end of your REM cycle, according to Amerisleep. REM stands for rapid eye movement and it is what happens when you are in a deep sleep. Your body is recovering, but your brain is actively awake, so it is important that you only wake up at the end of the cycle to feel enough rest.
When you hit the snooze button, you give yourself about nine minutes back in a REM cycle. “One of the most critical factors is the sleep stage prior to waking up,” according to a study published in Reviews for sleep medicine. If your snooze alarm goes off, you may be sitting right in the middle of that REM cycle. This means you will not get any sound or restorative sleep during your snooze period.
Here’s what the doctor says
To make sure you wake up at a good point in your REM cycle, say goodbye to your snooze button. “For the morning light, what gives that deep trigger in the brain is that your sleep-wake cycle is running correctly,” McSwiney says. If jumping out of bed when the alarm sounds impossible, it’s time to re-evaluate your sleeping habits.
If you rely heavily on a few snooze cycles every morning, it could mean that you are suffering from a sleep disorder or just not getting enough high quality sleep. “Make sure you get enough sleep for seven to eight hours and get good quality sleep,” he says Dr. Reena Mehra, MD, MS of the Cleveland Clinic.
“A large part of the last part of our sleep cycle consists of REM sleep, like dream sleep, which is a restorative sleep state,” explains Dr. More. “And so, if you hit the snooze button, you’ll disturb that REM sleep.”
If you know you’ll sleep well for seven to eight hours, but you’m still addicted to the snooze button, Dr. Mehra suggests seeing a doctor to evaluate your health. You may have an underlying sleep disorder that needs to be addressed.
Allocate the time and discipline to prevent the snooze and eventually you will jump out of bed when the alarm sounds. While it’s a difficult habit to break, once you stop relying on those extra nine minutes, you may feel more refreshed and in a better mood after you wake up. Get seven to eight hours of sleep every night strengthens your immune system as well– and to get this pandemic on your healthiest, do not miss this one 37 places you are most likely to catch Coronavirus.
