When you were a kid, it was mom! “Just
five more minutes” Now, you're pounding that snooze button once or multiple
times. You want a little more shut-eye; just five more minutes of fuel in the form
of sleep.
But, think twice next time you fill
your phone with ten different alarms. Sleep is very important. It's been proven
by all kinds of studies that our regular healthy dose of Zzzzzzzzzzz………. gives
your body much-needed rest and recovery plus it allows your brain to work at
its fullest.
If you wake up without or before the
alarm, you feel refreshed and ready to tackle the day, it sounds great. But,
why don't we always wake up like this? It is due to a busy schedule, working
late hours, exhaustion, anxiety, etc. Disrupt of sleep causes you all kinds of
problems and one of the most annoying of those is feeling sleepy right after you
wake up and even for most of the day.
It's because you keep hitting that
snooze button like it's your job. How can sleeping a little longer make you
even more tired?? It all has to do with the fact that sleep is divided into cycles.
Each lasting about an hour and a half. When you finally doze off, your brain
enters the first cycle. Then, the second and so on until it's well rested and
ready to wake up, which is usually after four cycles or so.
Therefore, you need at least six
hours of sleep per day to feel okay, to feel great. Though, you need about two extra hours on top of
that for your brain to enter its optimal state giving you a total of around
eight hours. Those two hours are when your brain is getting ready for the day
and it's exactly after this period that you wake up without any help. Of course,
when you've only slept about four or five hours you feel groggy and sleepy. Your
alarm will just irritate you. That's why we all either hit the snooze button or
just set a bunch of alarms in advance, each going off 10 or 15 minutes after
the previous one. So you've been rudely awakened by this annoying sound and you don't feel like rising and shining.
What you actually do when you hit
the snooze button is go off into a new sleep cycle. Remember how long those
lasts, right? About an hour and a half. So, basically if you don't get another
90 minutes of sleep after snoozing, you'll feel even worse. For it, waking up
in the middle of a sleep cycle breaks your sleep pattern confusing your brain
and making it think you still have time to catch those missing Zzzzzzz…. and
when you go in and out of a cycle repeatedly, that poor brain of yours just
goes unhinged and ceases to understand where it is and what it should do.
Ever felt disorientated in the
morning, like where am I? Who am I? What's going on? That foggy state you get
up and after you've hit snooze for 10 more minutes is called sleep inertia. Remember
learning about a nurture in school. Here, it refers to your brain being unable
to shake off the sleep and going straight into autopilot for you. It means that
you feel like going back to bed. You can't concentrate, can't make decisions and
generally want everyone to get out of your face. No amount of coffee will pull
you out of this state. It might only make you feel worse.
For that matter, at best, it'll give
you a short energy boost. That'll just disappear in a couple of hours. But, in
the worst-case scenario, it might simply thrash your nervous system. Without
that awareness boost you crave. Caffeine especially in high doses can cause jitters,
anxiety and an increased heart rate. Imagine a rush of all that into your blood
while your brain is still trying to figure out where your phone is even though
you're holding it in your hand. It gets worse. How long do you think sleep inertia
lasts??
In sleep mode, your brain actively
restores your mind and body when you're awake, though it's busy; multitasking with both
restoration and daily activities. So, it needs a lot more time to become fully
focused. It requires four full hours to get your gears turning. Basically, you
won't be able to do anything apart from the simplest tasks until lunch. After
that, with luck you'll finally be ready to start your normal day. But, you'll
already have wasted half of it with sleep inertia and a brain that hasn't
fully woken up. You might find yourself forgetting certain things you do every morning.
Have you ever tried to remember whether or not you locked the front door?? That's
because you did it automatically without thinking it through and your brain
didn't think it was necessary to register such a usual thing.
The more rituals you have, the more
you'll forget with time. What should you do to get rid of sleep inertia? One of
the best ways to pull your brain out of this fog is a nice shock. You need to
shake off the sleep and make your brain and body come and sink again. What
could tackle the job better than a cold shower actually to raise your alertness.
You don't even need a full-on shower. You only have to cool down your hands and
feet at least. Another way is to turn on loud music.
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