11/01/2023

Go Ahead and Hit the Snooze Button

Such behavior might not be as bad for you as you think

Many sleep experts take a dim view of using the snooze button in the morning. Setting serial alarms beginning earlier than you need to get up, rather than sleeping straight through until a single alarm, may prematurely pull you out of deep, restorative sleep, the thinking goes. And if you are snoozing beyond the time you actually meant to get out of bed, that may be a signal that you are not getting enough rest at night, said Philip Cheng, a sleep expert at Henry Ford Health.

But when Stephen Mattingly—a serial snoozer who completed his Ph.D. in cognition at the University of Notre Dame and then became a postdoctoral researcher at the university—turned to the scientific literature to see if the data backed up those warnings, he couldn't find much.

Previous studies had found that fragmented sleep at night is worse than short but uninterrupted sleep, and, more positively, that napping may reverse some of the damage associated with sleep deprivation (and potentially also improve heart health). But neither nighttime slumber nor daytime napping is exactly the same as snoozing first thing in the morning.

Please select this link to read the complete article from TIME.