Let’s say that I stayed up to late last night. When my alarm clock goes off, I roll over and hit the snooze button. Matter of fact, I do that several times. Let’s say 3 times, so 30 minutes of snoozing. Because the alarm went off, I’m not actually asleep for those 30 minutes. My eyes aren’t open, but I can hear things. I can feel things. Looking back I can remember those 30 minutes.
So really, I’m laying there with my eyes closed and my brain not working at full speed.
Did I gain anything in that 30 minutes? Does snoozing/resting allow my body to recoop, like sleeping does?
I usually have full dreams during each 9 minute snooze session and find it some of the best sleep I have although a little stressful when the buzzer goes off. The effectiveness of the snooze completely depends on the person. Laying there with your eyes closed is not the same as sleeping at all. True sleep can be easily confirmed in a sleep lab as the brain shifts into different brain wave patterns. I have had two inpatient sleep studies with very long reports with graphs about what is happening to me throughout the night. Nobody knows exactly why we need to sleep but it isn’t the same as resting in any sense.
I used to be like the person in the OP scenerio. 3 snooze hits, extra 27 mins of semi-sleep.
I got a new alarm clock last month.
The snooze timer is only 5 mins.
It will only snooze twice. - You hit it a third time and it turns the alarm off.
At first I totally hated the limited snooze.
But, I now have 17 more minutes in my day.
There’s not much physiological benefit from the time between hitting the snooze button. But it might help you feel better prepared to face the coming day emotionally.
sleep isn’t a toggle switch. it’s a dimmer switch. we fall in and out of sleep through REM cycles throughout the night. each cycle on average takes about 3 hrs. so if you’re stressed for time, you can make do with 3 hrs. the snooze button helps us ease out of deep sleep, like wading into a pool rather than jumping in. however, since we get our “good” rest in deep sleep, it really doesn’t offer much refreshing power.
That’s what it’s about for me. My wife can set the alarm, hop out of bed and start right into her day. When I try to do that, I spend the whole day angry, irritable, short-tempered, and just generally miserable to be and to be around. If I want to be out the door at 9 am, I set my alarm for 7:30 so that I’ve got an hour of slowly waking up time and half an hour to get ready. When I was single, I’d play music rather than hitting snooze because I don’t really want to be sleeping for that hour.
And, while it may not substitute for sleep, non-sleeping rest is still quite valuable. On the rare occasions that I’ve had to pull all-nighters, I prefer an hour or two of lying down with my eyes closed, while still awake. There’s just no point in trying to sleep for anything less than 5 hours for me.
I love the alarm clock on my phone. It’s a Samsung SGH-A137. I can make 9 different alarms. I can choose snooze lengths of 1, 3, 5, 7, or 10 minutes for each alarm. I can have 1, 2, 3, 5, or 10 repeats of the snooze for each alarm. And each alarm can be set for any combination of days of the week.
I don’t get the setting the alarm extra early to annoy me instead of sleeping until I actually want to get up thing; whenever I’ve used the snooze button and actually fallen back to sleep I’ve woken up loggy and disoriented, like when I’ve dreamed until the alarm went off. It seems like chronic use of the snooze button is more habitual than helpful.
Have you ever tried just setting your alarm 27 minutes later and seeing how you feel waking up that way? On a weekend, maybe, or another day off when it wouldn’t be devestating if you wake up feeling a lot worse.
