Science & Tech

This is the scientific reason why you should never snooze your alarm

This is the scientific reason why you should never snooze your alarm
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We’ve all been guilty of hitting that snooze button on our alarms on a gloomy winter Monday morning, but scientists warn there’s a reason why you shouldn’t.

Hitting the snooze when you’ve only got an extra 10 minutes of leeway in bed never makes you feel particularly well-rested and there’s a scientific reason for that.

Podcaster Mel Robbins explained in an episode of her podcast, The Mel Robbins Podcast, why you should never hit the snooze button.

Robbins explained: “Let me hit you with some neuroscience here. Two words: sleep inertia. When you hit the snooze button, you're awake, and as the alarm turns off, your brain then drifts back into sleep.

“Here's the thing that researchers have figured out - when you drift back to sleep after you've woken up, your brain starts a sleep cycle. Sleep cycles take 75 to 90 minutes to complete.”

Robbins continued, perfectly explaining that groggy feeling you often feel after being woken up when your snooze alarm goes off again.

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@melrobbins

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“So, when that alarm goes off again in nine minutes and you're like ‘oh my God’ - have you ever noticed you're in deep sleep when you drift back to sleep?

“That's because you're nine minutes in to a 75 minute sleep cycle, that groggy exhausted feeling that you have, that's not a function of how well you slept.

“That's you and me being an idiot for hitting the snooze button and putting our brain in a state of sleep inertia. It takes your brain about four hours to get through that groggy-a** feeling.”

Yes, Robins reveled it can take the brain up to four hours to recover from feeling groggy after being abruptly woken up mid-sleep cycle.

So, for your own benefit, perhaps think twice about using the snooze button and begin your day at that first alarm.

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