Why Hitting Snooze on Your Alarm Is Bad for Your Health
Every day, you do the same thing when it's time to get up for work: The alarm goes off, you tell yourself, "just five more minutes," turn it off, and five minutes later, it rings again. But you should be aware that, according to the Sleep University, not waking up at the first alarm—those extra five minutes—harms your health. It's a small torture for your body due to sleep inertia.
Prolonged sleep inertia, as explained by the site, is the feeling of fatigue and dizziness experienced upon waking in the morning, which typically lasts only 15 to 30 minutes. Research indicates that waking up during deep sleep causes this inertia to last 2 to 4 hours. What happens is that when we turn off the alarm, the sleep cycle begins again, the body goes back into "sleep mode," and we interrupt it again after five minutes, making us wake up more tired and less alert than if we hadn't slept those extra minutes.
The body has sleep cycles, with stages of deep sleep known as REM (Rapid Eye Movement). When these cycles begin, the body secretes hormones to induce deep sleep. If the world were "fair," the healthiest option would be to sleep until you wake up naturally, without relying on any alarm. When the alarm sounds, sleep cycles are interrupted, regardless of whether they are in a REM or non-REM stage. And as explained, giving yourself "those extra five minutes" harms your health because you restart the sleep cycle only to interrupt it again almost immediately.
Setting the alarm multiple times only confuses your brain and body with contradictory signals, making you wake up feeling like you've slept worse than you actually have. If you want to achieve better rest, one rule to follow is to sleep according to REM cycles, each lasting approximately 90 minutes. Therefore, it is recommended to sleep in multiples of 90 minutes so that when you wake up, the sleep cycle is complete, and you feel more relaxed.
Another trick to wake up more easily is to have a room where light enters, as this signals to the brain that a new day has begun. In short, you should forget about "those extra five minutes" and be realistic when setting your alarm on your phone to wake up. It's much better to account for those extra five minutes when setting the time you want to wake up.
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