An apple? Did you say an apple??
No way would I get out of bed for an apple … :eek:
Takes 2 coffees and 4 cigarettes to get me from sitting semi-comatose on the side of the bed to a standing position. 
Julie
Even better than a cat: get a dog. I’ve never had to use the alarmclock since we got our Jazz - everyday around 6AM he thinks it’s time to go look whether the garden is still there.
Cats are effective, all right. However, most of them are set for 4:00am.
Another vote for “make it a habit to get up right when the alarm goes off.”
Other suggestions: Have a big drink of water earlier, and your bladder will force you out of bed.
Have a morning routine that includes something you actually look forward to. Depending on your personal preference, this may include listening to music, physical and/or mental exercise, something good for breakfast, something good on TV (even if you have to tape it beforehand to watch in the morning)…
Join the army. Or just get a roommate who can play the bugle and has the personality of a drill sergeant.
As another apnoea sufferer, I’m wondering what treatment option you chose. I’ve been using the C-PAP (with decreasing effectiveness), but I’m seriously considering surgery.
I’ve asked this very question before:
I have heard the same thing myself though I can’t remember where.
The explanation was that the nutrients and complex carbs in the apple trigger the body to act more awake and it supplies sustaining energy thoughout the first parts of the digestive process (which takes several hours). While the coffee uses caffeine and simple carbs; the caffeine being less affective through use, and only at peak affectiveness for something like an hour or so, and the simple carbs provide a huge spike of energy for about the same time then will cause an insulin crash as they get used up.
Sounded logical to me, anyway, though IANABiologist, doctor, or nutritionist. It generally works for me though, but that’s purely anecdotal.
… says the morning person.
I keep my alarm clock in the spare bedroom, set for 4am daily. I usually hit snooze two, sometimes three times. I’m too asleep to realize that I’m doing it while I do it. I detest getting up. It sucks. So, yeah, I’d like something that works better. For the longest time I had the difference in the bedroom clock and alarm clock advanced enough that even with three snoozes, I had plenty of time for a liesurely shower and time to chew breakfast. Since the blackout, though, my timing’s all screwed up.
I’ve always wondered about this sleep apnea thing – how’s it diagnosed? I don’t imagine my family doctor is equipped, and I’d hate to pay him just for a referral (non-HMO so I can walk in anywhere without a referral, which is what I want [not having a referral]).
This may apprear radical, and it is, but it worked for me. It’s a problem for many young people. Most grow out of it once they get into your thirties. And of course, if you wake up with a nooner, who wants to get out of bed with that? I had to take drastic measures, because I just couldn’t get out of bed either, particularly after some late night parties, only to have to get up and have to be back to work a couple of hours later. So try this, culov and let me know how it goes. Without a doubt this is the most efficient way of waking up. If you do these three measures, it is 100% guaranteed to work, as long as you include the third one, but maybe after the first two steps, it won‘t be necessary for it. First, I set my 1,000 watt stereo to three-quarters volume to the loudest heavy metal rock station I could find. It would go off a blaring at 5:30AM precisely. Not only was I up at that time, but anyone else who was in the household, and one of the neighboring houses too. So this may be a problem if you’re not in a rural area or if you live with others that don‘t need to get up at that time, but I’m hoping you don’t have to skip this step. Perhaps you won’t need as much volume as me. Okay on to step two. On a timer to go off simultaneously with the radio, rig up two 500 watt halogen lights (Walmart, Lowes or Home Depot carries these) and aim those suckers just two feet directly away from your sleepy freakin’ head. That way, whether your eyes are open or closed, brother, you’re going to be seeing some serious light. (Warning, use two different outlets on two different circuits, for the stereo and lights just to be safe.) Just the heat off of them is enough to fix eggs on. But if you’re still lying in bed after this, then go to step three. This was a two weekend project for me. I had to raise my bed up high enough to where it could rotate 180 degrees on two metal arms attached to rotating bearings and a old flywheel I picked up at the salvage yard. I also used the same starter that came with the flywheel, and it made it a cinch to wire up to my 12 volt battery. This way, it didn’t require another circuit in the house either. Anyway, it was rigged up to where it would automatically dump me on the floor at exactly one minute after the radio and lights came on, if I had not hit the over-ride button, which was across the room, so that way, I had to get up. There was only one time I didn’t get out of bed fast enough to hit the over-ride button, so this last step may not be necessary. Oh, and there was another time where it malfunctioned, when it rotated my girl-friend and I out of bed, because we forgot to set the radio and lights first, so we didn’t have no prior warning. Just make sure you check all three before going to bed, and try not to worry about this, or that in itself will keep you from getting a good nights sleep. I was never late at work again, after I took these drastic measures. In fact, at the factory, I got voted most punctual, just soon after I installed it. Is anyone buying any of this BS?
JZ 
This report tells me that “morning person” is most likely an adaptive rather than a hard-wired characteristic.
For example: *"Scientists generally agree that sleep is a state of unconsciousness. However, the study’s finding show the mind may actually have some sort of conscious, voluntary control. It may explain why someone can wake up on time if they have to get up earlier than usual.
‘So you will quickly adapt to the new system and ACTH will secrete an hour before,’ Born [one of the researchers] said."*
So maybe if you just start getting up as soon as the alarm rings you will start putting out ACTH at the right time and the difficulty passes.
I imagine you an absolute JOY to live with.
Years ago I reached the point where waking up to an alarm was intolerable. When I tried waking up to the radio I found that I’d usually just find myself dreaming about whatever they were talking about. I finally settle on just letting myself wake up. That’s right! NO ALARMS. I let the circadian(sp) rhythm do the work.
My SO also no longer uses an alarm of any sort. Do we wake up late? Occasionally, but no more so than if we used an alarm and forgot to set it. Probably less.
This does not solve the problem of still being too tired. I know the OP said OTHER THAN more sleep, etc, but frankly, it IS a sleep issue.
It sure is fun to see what folks do to wake up though.
Well, I also tried the alarm in a far away place technique – didn’t work. Like pokey, I too would just walk back to bed and fall asleep.
The trick is to make it difficult to turn the alarm off, that way, you’re forced to wake up because now you have to tinker with the alarm and actually think.
I leave my computer on overnight and use an MP3 program where it’ll play any song at any time you specify.
I also have my computer speakers up on a high shelf where I need a chair if I want to access them. (That way, I can’t just turn the volume down.) And, I also unplug my mouse.
So, when the MP3 starts playing, I wake up, get out of bed, turn on the light, find the end of the mouse cord, look at back of the computer to find the mouse port (which is still a dark area, even with the light on), plug it in, then proceed to stop the MP3 from playing.
It wakes me up every time.
Have a baby.
No, really. You’ll never sleep again.
I have first-person experience that having a child arrive at your bedside and say, “I have to throw up” can absolutely shoot you into instant wakefullness.
Normally, though, I set my alarm ~30 min before I “really” have to get out of bed. In college, when I didn’t have a wife to jab me on my butt to get me to shut off the snoozer, I had two alarm clocks: one by my bed set to 6:00 and one across the room set for 6:20. I got two snoozes, then I had to walk across the room.
**Acsenray, ** I had the surgery to remove the uvala (the hanging down thing in the back of your throat) for my sleep apenea and snoring. I was also going to have my tonsils out but my mouth was too small and so I still have them. Anyway, now I do not snore and I am more rested if I go to bed at a descent hour.
Man, I hope all of you are celibate.
The guy I lived with back in college days needed to get up before I did, about half an hour. But he would set his alarm for AN HOUR before he really planned to get up, and just keep hitting the snooze button over and over. Did he care that that mean I got jolted awake ever ten minutes for a full hour, starting 90 minutes before I needed to???
Not a bit. That was his system and he was sticking to it.
I don’t say that’s the only reason I split up with him, but it was sure a contributing factor.
Back when I lived by myself, I had a problem that I’d snooze my alarm until it shut itself off (1 hour). So I decided I needed to write myself a custom program which would never give up on me. Over the course of several months, I added features to this program to make it more and more obnoxious, but eventually I would adapt to each one and begin to deal with it in my sleep. By the time I quit using it, I had a program which would make louder and louder noises each time it snoozed, and the snooze interval incrementally decreased. There was no UI (otherwise I would just close it), and in order to make it harder for me to hunt down and kill the process, the program would make a randomly-named copy of itself and execute that.
I got to the point where the noise would be unbearable and the snooze interval was 30 seconds, but I would still repeatedly stumble over to the desk, type “ps -aux”, read the output, type “kill -9 23534” (or whatever PID it was), stumble back to bed, and sleep for 30 seconds. I truly amazed myself.
Now somehow I’m able to wake up by the ever-so-quiet peeping of my cell phone alarm, and I only snooze it a few times. I’m not sure what’s changed.
A correct use of celibate! (I hate it when people who should know better use it for ‘chaste’.)
Some people have longer circadian rhythms than others, and it IS tough to reset them every morning.
Oh, a light never fails to wake my spouse up; maybe you could put a bright reading lamp on a timer.
Across the room, of course.
The best way to wake up right when the alarm goes off:
Set the alarm for 1:30 pm.