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The snooze button, one of man's best inventions...until nine minutes later when
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the dreaded alarm strikes again. Except now you feel even more tired, so do you
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hit it again? Are those extra minutes really helping at all? Or is it the
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beginning of a never-ending cycle that ends in you being late and still dead tired.
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In an unimaginable world without alarm clocks our bodies would simply wake up
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naturally, seems crazy right? But our bodies have many chemical mechanisms in
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place to not only put us to sleep, but wake us up as well. The body begins
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preparing in the hour before you naturally wake-up, body temperature rises
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sleep becomes lighter and hormones such as dopamine and cortisol are released
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which give you energy to start your day. But the problem with alarms is that they
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often interrupt your sleep cycle and cut these processes short. Particularly if you
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don't have a regular sleep rhythm or schedule, the alarm goes off, but your body
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isn't quite ready. This groggy and tired state is known as "sleep inertia"
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and its strength is related to which sleep stage you are waking up out of.
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The deeper the sleep the more potent the sleep inertia and so the snoozing
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begins. But the snooze button can do more damage than good, as you fall back asleep
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the body be restart its sleep cycle and enter into deeper sleep stages. So
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instead of your body prepping to wake up, it's going in the opposite direction and
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as a result the second alarm may cause you to feel even more tired
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and so continues the vicious cycle.
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Ultimately. you would be better off setting your original alarm later and not
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interrupting your sleep. Many studies have found that fragmented sleep is much
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less restorative
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and leads to sleepiness related daytime impairment. So by breaking up those last
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thirty minutes or so of sleep, you are more likely to feel tired and perform
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poorly during the day. What else can you do? Try adopting a more regular sleep
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schedule. Being tired is not only a product of sleep deprivation or waking
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up out of a deep sleep, but also lacking a consistent schedule. The body loves
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predictability, wake up at the same time every morning, including the weekends, and
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after a few weeks your body should adapt to the timing and be less inclined to
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require an alarm in the first place. And if you do wake up feeling a little
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tired, try to resist the snooze temptation and just get up,
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because as the saying goes "you snooze you lose".
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Got a burning question you want answered? Ask it in the comments, or on facebook and twitter.
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