Most people hit the snooze button in the morning - because they are chronically tired, according to a new study. The first scientific investigation into snoozing found 57 per cent of fully-employed adult white-collar workers hit the snooze button.
University of Notre Dame researchers in the United States found it didn't matter if you woke up at the first alarm or the third, needing an alarm at all was a sign you are too tired. When respondents woke naturally without an alarm they slept longer and drank less caffeine in the day.
Whether they snoozed after waking or not, they got the same amount of sleep. Those who did snooze without an alarm weren’t taking more naps in the day, and didn’t report feeling tired in the day more frequently.
The team explained that if we wake naturally the body experiences a stress response just before we rise to make us feel alert. We also have different hormones circulating in the body when we're in deep sleep versus just before we get up naturally.
As a result they said alarms are making people feel groggy because it disrupts that natural sleep cycle and by bypasses the natural stress response that makes us alert. This comes as The Centers for Disease Control estimates one in three Americans do not get enough sleep and the NHS says one in five UK residents aren’t.
The team also discovered night owls hit snooze the most and were the most tired. Dr Stephen Mattingly from University of Notre Dame, the lead author of the study, said: “Most of what we know about snoozing is taken from data on sleep, stress or related behaviours.
“Alarm clocks, smartphones, they all have snooze buttons. The medical establishment is generally against the use of snoozing, but when we went to look at what hard data existed, there was none.
“We now have the data to prove just how common it is — and there is still so much that we do not know. So many people are snoozing because so many people are chronically tired. If only 1 in 3 people are sleeping adequately, that means a lot of us are turning to other means to manage fatigue.”
Every day the team surveyed 450 adults with full-time, salaried employment. Data was also collected from wearable devices measuring sleep duration and heart rate.
According to the study, women were 50 per cent more likely to snooze than men but those who hit snooze experience more disturbances during sleeping hours. Dr Mattingly said: “These are people who have been in the workforce for years, white-collar workers with advanced degrees — and 57 per cent of them are snoozing.
“Critically, these statistics are only representative of a small population that is likely to be in the best position with respect to sleep habits. We have no idea about various age groups such as teenagers, lower-income households or any of the populations that are historically more sleep deprived than the respondents of this study. So, the odds are this is probably a conservative estimate of the wider population."
After finding night owls snoozed more and were more tired in general, Dr Mattingly said: “In the 9 to 5 world, night owls are losing. When we are able to sleep as long as we want the body experiences a stress response right before waking. That physiological response contributes to an individual feeling alert when they wake up.
“When you wake up from a REM sleep state, your brain is most of the way to being fully awake. Hormone levels circulating at that stage are going to be different than when you’re in a deep sleep. If you snooze and you’re more alert when you get behind the wheel to go to work, that might be a benefit and a useful one.
“If it reduces dependence on caffeine, that’s another. It’s not uniformly bad — similar to stress. Some stress is good — that’s why we have the fight or flight response. There are times and places for it. There may be cases when hitting the snooze button is actually beneficial."
Writing in journal Sleep, professor Aaron Striegel, professor of computer science and engineering at Notre Dame, said needing an alarm because you're too tired is an issue. He said: “Part of the focus of this study was to demystify what is happening with snoozing.
“Is it really worse than waking up to an alarm on the first ring — is it that much different? The recommendation against an alarm is well-founded, but as far as we can tell from the physiology and our data, waking to one alarm or hitting the snooze button and waking to two or three alarms doesn’t make much of a difference. If you need an alarm because you’re sleep-deprived — that’s the issue.”
Both researchers said more must be done to study the negative health impacts of snoozing. They said the best advice is for everyone to sleep as much as their body needs.
