Think That Extra 10 Minutes Helps? What Hitting Snooze Really Does to Your Sleep Here's why—and how to stop snoozing
New research found that the habit of snoozing your alarm in the morning is widespread, but experts warn that it's worse for your sleep
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- New research suggests that the habit of snoozing your alarm in the morning is widespread.
- Snoozing won’t help you wake up and can actually make you lose out on deep sleep, experts warned.
- Instead, set your alarm at the latest possible wake-up time, move the alarm away from your bed, and take steps to improve your sleep quality overall.
If you snooze your alarm every morning, you’re not alone. A new study suggests that snoozing is widespread—but this habit won’t help you wake up, and can actually make you lose out on quality sleep, experts warned.
The study, published in Scientific Reports in May, assessed more than 3 million nights of sleep and found that 56% of them ended with snoozing for an average of 11 minutes.
Hitting snooze is a common practice that can indicate poor sleep habits or sleep disorders, yet it has received little attention in research, Rebecca Robbins, PhD, study co-author and a sleep expert and researcher at Mass General Brigham and Harvard Medical School, told Health.
“The snooze alarm disrupts some of the most important stages of sleep,” including rapid eye movement sleep that occurs in the hours before waking, Robbins said. “Hitting the snooze alarm will interrupt these critical stages of sleep and typically only offer you light sleep in between snooze alarms.”
Snoozing Statistics
To understand the prevalence and nature of snoozing, researchers analyzed six months of data from about 21,000 users of SleepCycle, a sleep-monitoring smartphone app, for a total of over 3 million nights of sleep. Participants were divided nearly equally between men and women, and a little less than half resided in the U.S.
The study found that 56% of sleep sessions ended with hitting snooze. The button was pressed an average of 2.4 times each morning for a total of 10.8 minutes of snoozing, as the majority of participants had their snooze alarms set for five minutes.
This equates to about six hours of lost sleep every month.
According to Anne Marie Morse, DO, a board-certified pediatric neurologist with clinical and research interests in sleep medicine at Geisinger Medical Center, the most interesting finding was that people who slept longer snoozed more.
Participants who slept at least 10 hours a night hit snooze twice as much and snoozed twice as long—an average of five times for 25 minutes—compared to those who slept six hours or less. If someone is still snoozing after such a long night of sleep, it could signal poor sleep quality or hypersomnia disorders, Morse told Health.
The study also had several other notable findings:
- About 45% of participants were considered “heavy" snoozers, pressing the button more than 80% of mornings and averaging 20 minutes of snoozing daily.
- Those with poor sleep habits, such as sleeping and waking at inconsistent times each day, tended to snooze more.
- Participants were more likely to hit snooze during the week than on the weekends, when most people catch up on sleep.
- Women had slightly longer snooze durations than men, consistent with previous research showing women struggle more with sleep.
The study’s main limitation was that the sleep app didn’t measure other key factors that could affect snoozing, such as how long users took to fall asleep or if they woke up during the night.
Should You Stop Hitting Snooze?
The biggest reason we hit snooze is sleep inertia, or feeling groggy when we wake up—which is completely normal, Robbins said.
“It is actually not common to wake up and feel ‘bright-eyed and bushy-tailed’ as the saying goes,” she added.
However, pressing snooze won’t help you feel refreshed and can actually increase grogginess, Daniella Marchetti, PhD, DBSM, a licensed clinical psychologist with Rise Science specializing in behavioral sleep medicine, told Health.
“It is often a mix of light sleep or groggy wakefulness, which can make it even harder to get out of bed,” she said.
And every time you are roused out of sleep, your body releases cortisol and adrenaline to help wake you up. That means snoozing several times may increase your heart rate and blood pressure, Marchetti said.
Plus, hitting the snooze button doesn’t meaningfully add to your sleep quantity, as the time between snoozing and waking is not long enough to dive back into deeper, more restorative stages of sleep, Marchetti added.
How to Wake Up Without the Snooze Button
Experts recommended several tips to reduce your urge to snooze and improve your sleep overall:
- Set your alarm for the latest possible time you need to get up. Leaving no “wiggle room" can help reduce your snoozing, Marchetti said. “The lack of extra time will motivate you to jump out of bed faster, because otherwise, there will be very real consequences,” like being late to work, she said.
- Place the alarm away from your bed. You’ll feel more alert when you have to physically get up to turn off your alarm clock, reducing the temptation to snooze and get back in bed.
- Improve your sleep hygiene overall. Certain habits—like avoiding caffeine, alcohol, and social media before bed, keeping your room cool and dark, and maintaining a consistent bedtime and wake-up time—can all help you get a good night’s sleep.
- Log your sleep habits. Keeping a diary of habits that affect sleep can help determine if your trouble sleeping is due to your lifestyle or an actual sleep problem, Morse advised. “All 24 hours matter,” she said. “Even those [habits] not in close proximity to bedtime influence your quality, quantity, and duration of sleep.”
If you make lifestyle changes and still sleep through multiple alarms, have difficulty waking up, or feel tired during the day, it’s best to seek the advice of a healthcare provider, Morse added.
This story originally appeared on: Health News - Author:Cathy Nelson
