Why Hitting Snooze Is Bad For Your Sleep

Most people need an alarm to wake up on time, but it turns out that using one could be causing more harm than good to your sleep — especially to those of us who hit the snooze button one (or three) times. Research shows that those extra few minutes of rest after hitting snooze may actually interfere with your body's waking up process. That's right — hitting snooze is bad for you.

As ASAP Science explains in the video below, alarms interrupt your natural sleep cycle, which affects your ability to wake up properly and often leaves you with that bleary, groggy feeling in the morning. That feeling is known as sleep inertia, and it generally wears off as you go about your day, leaving us to function normally.

But here's where that tricky snooze button often comes in and throws us off balance. If you fall back to sleep after hitting snooze, your body will return to sleep even more deeply than before. That leaves your body all the more confused when your alarm goes off again a few minutes later. The more times you hit the button, the more likely it is you'll experience sleep inertia that makes you sluggish and tired in the mornings.

Bottom line: to avoid throwing your body into further confusion and prevent that extra sleepy feeling in the A.M., get up as soon as your alarm goes off without hitting your snooze button. It may be easier said than done, but it'll go a long way towards making you feel more rested when you wake up.