If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t need an alarm clock to naturally wake your body up every morning, I hate you. But since that’s not likely the case, you’re here because you use the annoying little time teller on a daily basis. Be forewarned: The latest ASAP Science video reports that if you take too much advantage over your alarm’s snooze button, it could do more damage than good.
The reason is all in the sleep cycle. Think about that groggy feeling after the first alarm goes off. Your mind and body feels like this because it has yet to complete the cycle, therefore waking up in the middle of it leaves you tired. So when you press the snooze button and fall back asleep, your body doesn’t necessarily continue where it left off. Rather, it resets the sleep cycle – providing even less time to finish the lap. Since snooze buttons generally last no more than 10 minutes, your body will once again be interrupted mid-cycle and leave you even sleepier than you were before.
Instead of setting your alarm early so you can sneak in a few more minutes of rest, set it at the latest time you would have woken up had you utilize the snooze button (ASAP Science estimates this is about 30 minutes after your initial alarm if you regularly snooze). This gives your body enough time to hopefully finish the cycle and wake up as naturally as possible. If that still doesn’t work, it’s time to log off Netflix and Hulu and get to bed earlier, you couch potato! Lucky for you, tomorrow is a weekend, so heed to this advice come Monday morning.
For more details, watch the ASAP Science video below for cute illustrations and explanation.
