A new study suggests smashing that alarm button may not be all that bad but there are other opinions

Report Issue

Please complete the required fields.

Your Name

Email

Reason (required)
This post contains broken linksPost has incorrect informationPost has spamCopyright IssueOther

Description

Submit

Just how bad is it, really, to smash the snooze button when your alarm blares? What about doing it a second time, or a third?

New research out of Sweden suggests that it may not be as detrimental to your sleep as it seems, although some sleep experts still advise against it.

Across two studies, researchers set out to examine the effects of snoozing, or using intermittent alarms, to postpone finally dragging yourself out of bed. They started by surveying over 1,700 people about their sleep habits and found that nearly 70 percent of them routinely hit the snooze button. The subjects mostly did so because they felt too tired to wake up, although 17 percent said they snoozed because “it feels good.”

The researchers then had 31 habitual snoozers spend several nights in a sleep lab. On one morning, they were allowed to hit the snooze button every 10 minutes or so, for up to 30 extra minutes of rest. But on another morning, they had to get up right after their alarms went off.

Immediately after the participants woke up, the researchers flipped on the lights and presented them with math problems and other cognitive tests — a challenge even more rewarding than a shrieking alarm, and one the participants had to complete before having a cup of coffee.

Overall, participants performed slightly better on some of the cognition tests when they were allowed to snooze for 30 minutes, and their sleep quality wasn’t significantly worse because of the morning snoozing, said Tina Sundelin, a researcher at Stockholm University and the lead author. of the studies.

If you tend to be very tired in the morning, “half-sleeping, or sleeping rather than being awake and not functioning, might actually be helpful to your final wake-up,” she said.

The sleep lab portion of the study included only a small number of people, and the average age of the participants was around 27. Both of those factors make it difficult to draw widespread conclusions about the effects of snoozing on sleep. The researchers also excluded people with insomnia symptoms and people who said they had trouble sleeping in places other than their own beds.

Apple Warning: Don’t Sleep With Your iPhone