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Sleeping is the best! Waking up is the worst!
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Just five more minutes, Mom.
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But that never really helps, does it?
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Hey there, snoozers. Trace here for Dnews.
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Thanks for watching and check this out-- new set!
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It's awesome.
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I had a roommate in college whose alarm went off at 7:15 for his 8 am class.
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The radio as loud as the volume would go, he didn't even flinch or wake up.
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But I almost hit the ceiling, it scared me so much.
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We've done a lot of videos on sleep.
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We even actually have a sleep playlist you can check out.
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But waking up... some days I just don't wanna get up.
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Social jet lag, or the idea we have to wake up before our natural rhythms want us to wake up, affects 70 percent of the population, according to a study in Current Biology.
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And difficulty waking up is called sleep inertia.
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A 2013 study in PlosOne describes it as, "a temporary period of reduced alertness and impaired performance."
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Scientific symptoms of sleep inertia are poor memory and reaction time, inability to perform basic math and the suffering of alertness or attention.
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These symptoms can persist for an hour and usually occurs when you wake up during slow-wave sleep.
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Sleep comes to humans in order across four stages:
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Stage 1 is the transition from wakefulness to a light sleep.
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During this 5 to 10 minute stage, the electrical signals pulsing through your brain form theta waves.
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The next 20 minutes is Stage 2.
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The brain is producing rapid bursts of activity called sleep spindles, and the heart rate slows, and body temperature fluctuates and dips.
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Stage 3 is slow-wave sleep or delta sleep.
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This lasts about an hour, and brain activity comes in the form of delta waves.
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People in this stage aren't responsive when you call their name, and abnormal behaviors like bed-wetting or sleepwalking are a part of the end of this stage.
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That's where you get to Stage 4, that's famous REM sleep when dreams happen, everybody knows about that!
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When you fall asleep, you go through stage one and then to stage two. Then three, four, then back to two.
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Then three, four, then back to two. You'll do this four to five times in a night of sleep.
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If your alarm goes off when you're in stage three, the deepest of sleep, then you'll be jolted awake, and you'll get the worst of sleep inertia!
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This is usually when people describe like they were being "hit by a truck" when they wake up.
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The hormones surging through your body that keep you in a deep sleep are still floating around, affecting your now awake body.
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Sleep inertia is still being studied, it was only named in the late 70s
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So, say it with me now, MORE RESEARCH IS NEEDED!
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But what we do know is the best medicine is to get out of bed and turn on the lights and get going
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because the retina is directly connected to the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN.
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The SCN controls our sleep-wake cycle and the release of melatonin, which is a hormone that triggers the sleeping part of the sleep/wake cycle.
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Your phone, that doesn't count. You need to actually get up and see some daylight.
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It's true that at night the blue light from your phone and your tablet screens mess with your SCN regulation of that sleep/wake cycle.
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So don't use them before you go to sleep.
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But a study in PlosOne found that increasing that blue light in the morning doesn't increase brain alertness during sleep inertia.
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So, grabbing your phone first thing isn't gonna save you.
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Also, the snooze button is NOT your friend.
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If you're jolted from slow-wave sleep and allow your brain to drop into sleep again, you're gonna start the whole sleep cycle over, causing you to feel even worse.
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And don't set alarms every half an hour, you're not gradually waking yourself up.
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You're interrupting and restarting your sleep cycle over and over again.
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I'm guilty of this, so are many of you. It is the worst, just stop it.
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Like everything, having a healthy sleep/wake cycle requires effort -- like running a race, we have to train to be good at it.
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Waking up is no different.
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You can set one alarm, you can make yourself wake up when it goes off.
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And it's gonna be terrible for a while, but it'll get better.
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Take down the blackout curtains so you get some daylight and that will help because your retinas will tell your SCN it's wakeup time.
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If you wake up early on the weekend too, you won't throw off your weekday sleep schedule!
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A morning routine is the best. And everyone is different.
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But luckily, wakefulness is actually really easy to train, but only you can do it.
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I used to be a night owl, I'd be up till two, three in the morning, and wake up mid-day.
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But having to be up to everyday for DNews has made me a morning person in some ways, and it's completely changed my sleep/wake cycle.
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And you know what? I kind of love it.
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Do you wanna change your sleep schedule? Go head and tell us about it down below. Leave some tips if you got some, and make sure you subscribe for more Dnews.