When you snooze, you don’t actually lose, according to a new study.
Hitting the snooze button in the morning and nodding off again won’t improve your mood when you get up but will make some people sharper.
Scientists believe this is because it prevents waking directly from REM or slow-wave sleep, according to their study published in the Journal of Sleep Research.
Surprisingly, although most people said they snoozed because they were tired or in a bad mood on waking, going back to sleep again had no effect on this.
Dr. Tina Sundelin from Stockholm University said: “The findings indicate that there is no reason to stop snoozing in the morning if you enjoy it, at least not for snooze times around 30 minutes.
“In fact, it may even help those with morning drowsiness to be slightly more awake once they get up.”
The team carried out two experiments.
In the first, they looked at 31 habitual snoozers. They found that 30 minutes of snoozing either improved or did not affect performance on cognitive tests directly upon rising compared with waking up abruptly.
Snoozing resulted in about six minutes of lost sleep but it prevented waking from slow-wave sleep.
There were no clear effects of snoozing on stress hormone levels, morning sleepiness, mood, or overnight sleep structure.
In the second experiment, they looked at 1,732 adults’ morning waking habits, with 69 percent saying they used the snooze function or set multiple alarms at least sometimes.
In those who snoozed, the average time spent snoozing per morning was 22 minutes, ranging from one to 180 minutes.
Snoozers tended to be younger than non-snoozers and were more likely to be evening types.
Morning drowsiness and shorter sleep were also more common in those who snoozed.
The most commonly reported reason for snoozing was ‘feeling too tired to wake up’ (25 percent) followed by ‘it feels good’ (17 percent) and wanting ‘to wake up more slowly/softly’.
Regular snoozers tended to feel more mentally drowsy upon waking, which may be down to the fact that they are younger and go to bed later than those who never snooze.
They may need more time to ward off the effects of sleep inertia, and snoozing may be a potential way of doing this, considering the cognitive improvements.
Even though participants felt equally sleepy upon waking in both conditions, they performed better on three out of the four cognitive tests at final waking when they had been allowed 30 minutes of snoozing beforehand.
Dr. Sundelin said: “A surprising finding was that snoozing did not affect self-reported sleepiness or mood.
“Considering that the most commonly reported reasons for snoozing included drowsiness and that it feels good, one would have expected a direct effect of being
allowed to snooze on these subjective measures.
“One possibility is that individuals who are very drowsy when the alarm goes off
choose to snooze because it is preferable to rising, rather than for its positive effects on sleepiness and mood
“If the first alarm interrupts slow-wave sleep or rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep, snoozing may allow for the opportunity to reach a lighter sleep stage before having
to fully wake up.
“This could make it easier to wake up and diminish the drowsing effects of sleep inertia, the transitioning period from sleep to waking characterized by impaired performance and sleepiness.”
Produced in association with SWNS Talker
