Don’t Hit That Snooze Button!

By  //  March 25, 2013

Fascinating, Fun Scientific Facts

(VIDEO: AsapSCIENCE)

AsapSCIENCE is the creative brainchild of two Canadians, Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown, who, after graduating from the University of Guelph with biology degrees, recognized the power of YouTube to inform and entertain. Their very popular YouTube channel produces three-minute lessons that bring logic, reason, and scientific evidence to some of the most common of questions, the ones that everybody’s asking and no one’s actually answering, such as The Scientific Power of Naps,  What Causes a Hangover?, The Scientific Hangover Cure, The Science Of Aging, and The Science Of Hair Loss, just to name a few.

In the video above they tackle the fun and fascinating facts related to the snooze button. Should you hit it? Will doing so actually make you more tired?

Beware, that few extra minutes of shuteye you get after hitting the snooze button may cause you to feel even more tired when you do get up.

According to AsapSCIENCE, our bodies begin preparing for the day in the hour before waking up by raising our internal temperature, and releasing two hormones–dopamine and cortisol. Hitting the snooze button creates physiologic confusion and causes re-entry into the sleep cycle at a point that puts us into a deeper sleep stage than before the alarm went off, making getting out of bed more challenging than simply waking up with the first alarm.

“So, instead of your body prepping to wake up, it’s going in the opposite direction,” the video says. “As a result, the second alarm may cause you to feel even more tired.”

According to sleep experts, it is best to set the alarm later and settle into a consistent routine of waking up with the original alarm when it goes off the first time because the fragmented sleep the body undergoes in the first 10 to 30 minutes after hitting the snooze button can disrupt the physiology of restorative sleep and result in impaired daytime activities.