Do You Hit The Snooze Button? Sleep Doctors Share What It Could Mean For Your Health.

“Just a few more minutes of sleep” is what you’re likely to say to yourself or your partner when your alarm goes off in the morning.You may then hit the snooze button once, twice or even three times.

Many people start the day by hitting the alarm clock and snoozing, but how can this affect your rest?As it turns out, this can have a real impact on your sleep and even your mood.

Below, sleep doctors share their thoughts on naps and how it affects sleep.

Overall, putting your alarm clock on pause may disrupt your sleep.

It’s no surprise that an alarm clock going off can affect your sleep.

There are two important components of sleep: one is sleep duration and the other is sleep quality.Sleep continuity is an important component of sleep quality.

This means that if you’re waking up a lot – whether it’s due to internal factors like nightmares or external reasons like trains passing by – “that’s a danger sign for usIt’s a red flag for us.You’ll automatically check your surroundings for safety before going back to sleep.

It’s not good for sleep recovery.We need continuous uninterrupted sleep to regain our strength.When you keep hitting the alarm clock, you deprive yourself of continuous sleep.

Basically, the half hour that puts you to sleep is worth less to you and your body than setting your alarm a half hour later and then sleeping until the alarm wakes you up.

It may damage your body.

Some studies have shown that getting up after your alarm goes off can affect your arousal hormones.

There have been studies where researchers have told people, “Okay, we’re going to wake you up at 5 a.m.,” and you’ll find that those people have already begun to secrete hormones much earlier than those who were told they’d be getting up at 7 a.m.

In the particular study he cites, both groups actually woke up at 7 a.m., but “you could see the body’s ongoing processes, and the people in the 5 a.m. group were ready for wakefulness earlier than the people in the 7 a.m. group,” Basner notes, meaning that their bodies began to wake up from sleep earlier, preparing them for their anticipated early riseGetting ready.

If you set your alarm 30 minutes earlier than needed, just to give yourself some nap time, these hormones may be released earlier than needed.

On top of that, for some people, hitting the snooze button can affect the whole day.

“At the end of the nocturnal cycle, many times we go into REM sleep,” says Patrick M. Fuller, a professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of California, Davis. “We think REM is related to dream sleep …… may also be related to important neurobiological aspects such as memory consolidation,” he added.

“The idea is that you hit the nap button, the alarm goes off and you wake up from rapid eye movement sleep …… and then you go back to this weird light sleep state,” Fuller said.

He noted that when these people woke up from light sleep, they reported being more groggy than they were before they hit the snooze button.

“So, I would say it’s probably not good for this social group to hit the snooze button because for the rest of the day you feel disoriented and groggy because you’re back in a weird state of mind when you should have gotten up,” Fuller said.

This can also have harmful effects, especially for people with certain medical conditions.

Dr. David Kuhlman, director of sleep medicine at Boswell Regional Health Center in Missouri, says waking up multiple times may cause blood pressure to rise in people who suffer from obstructive sleep apnea, a condition in which breathing is interrupted during sleep.

Kuhlman says, “If you wake up multiple times during the night, it can lead to a faster heart rate, higher blood pressure when you wake up, and sleep apnea.You can also see how an alarm clock going off frequently can affect your blood pressure and resting heart rate.”

But putting your alarm clock on pause isn’t all bad.

“We should avoid demonizing the snooze button, if you will,” Fuller said.”I think it should show that if you really feel you have to use it, you may need to make some changes to your lifestyle” to get better sleep, he added.

Those who sleep late seem to benefit more from the snooze button.

“For some people, hitting the snooze alarm may be beneficial, and interestingly, the people who seem to benefit the most from snooze alarms are what we call ‘owls’ – that is, people who tend to stay up late at night,” says Fuller.”Fuller says.

“It’s just their circadian rhythm phenotype – how their biological clock works,” he notes.Night owls may naturally fall into a deep sleep when their alarm goes off in the morning, which makes them want to hit the alarm button.

A recent small Swedish study suggests that alarm clock naps may not actually affect sleep quality or cognitive levels as many experts fear.The researchers concluded that laboratory tests on sleepers showed that a 30-minute nap “directly improved or did not affect performance on cognitive tests when waking up compared to waking up abruptly.

“As the study shows, for some people it’s not really an issue,” said Fuller, who was not involved in the study.

However, the study was small and consisted mainly of young people, so its findings may not be applicable to everyone.

If you are frustrated with using the snooze button, don’t make it too convenient.

If you want to break the habit of hitting the alarm clock to snooze, Fuller suggests that you put your alarm clock – whether it’s your cell phone or an actual clock – on the other side of the room.

“You have to get up and turn it off, right?”Fuller said.”Once you straighten up, you’re like, ‘Okay, I’m up, whatever.Now I’m going to go do my thing.'”

In other words, if you’re already up, then you’re less inclined to keep hitting the snooze button.

Better yet, try not to use an alarm clock.

Your sleep should be natural; you don’t need an alarm clock to wake you up.

While this may seem impossible for those who need to get up early and work late at night, there are a few things that can make it work for those who try.

Kuhlman said the first step is to make sure you get enough sleep.The National Institutes of Health says adults need seven to nine hours of sleep.

Kuhlman suggests counting back from the time you need to get up to see when you go to bed to get enough sleep.Ideally, you’ll wake up naturally when your body is fully rested.(It’s best to try this first on days when you don’t have morning commitments, such as weekends or days off.)

In addition, certain habits can make it easier to fall asleep and wake up.

Kuhlman says, “Exercising in the morning helps train your circadian rhythm to wake up at a specific time.”He adds, “If you need to wake up earlier, receiving light in the morning will help and can help you get to the sleep stage earlier.”

Some of the reasons you doze off may require a trip to the doctor.

“If someone needs to hit the snooze alarm five times, 10 times, etc., that actually indicates a bigger problem,” Fuller said.

The bigger problem, he says, may be that you’re not getting enough sleep.To determine if this is the case, you don’t have to go directly to a sleep clinic; you can do multiple sleep latency tests at home.

In order to do that, you need to sit in a quiet environment in the middle of the day with no outside stimuli, “If you fall asleep in less than five minutes – and that’s what they’re doing in the clinic, no kidding –then by definition you’re sleep deprived,” Fuller says.

If you suspect you’re not getting enough sleep, Fuller says you should see a sleep doctor who can determine what’s wrong with your rest, if it’s a sleep disorder or if you need to make lifestyle adjustments such as drinking less coffee, drinking less alcohol before bedtime, and not exposing yourself to blue light at night or sleeping in a colder room.

“I think 90 percent of people don’t need medication; they don’t need anything except lifestyle changes,” Fuller said.

Kuhlman adds that since you don’t actually know what your body is doing while you sleep, you may not be aware of potential red flags.(Snoring, for example, can be a sign of sleep apnea.)

“But you do know how you feel the next morning.So if you wake up with a headache …… if you’re really dreading getting out of bed every morning and having to hit the alarm multiple times (after eight hours of sleep), then that may indicate that you do need to be evaluated,” Kuhlman says.

For some people, an alarm clock going off is harmless.But for others, it can signal a bigger problem.If you’re concerned, it’s best to consult a sleep specialist to determine which method is right for you.