Quit Snoozing

If you're thinking, "Thank heavens for that little snooze button on my phone. Now I can buy myself some grace time," you need take back that gratitude. Whether you snooze with the help of your mobile phone or your alarm clock, you're actually doing no good and on the contrary, worse to yourself. Best described, it's a psychological crutch which involves ruining your state of mind for the remainder of the day. We spoke to experts to know why snoozing is harmful.

Case in point
Thirty-year-old male Amit Mishra (name changed), suffered a history of daytime sleepiness for period of four months. It resulted in poor performance at work, for which he sought professional help for sleep study test. On examination, he was found to have no obvious illness whatsoever. But during conversation it was revealed that he particularly felt sleepy and groggy in the morning on waking up, but used to have comparatively undisturbed sleep at night. On detailed history taking, it was found out that he had a habit of using the snooze button daily in the morning continuously for an hour. On simply asking him to stop using the snooze button for 10 days, he got better without need of any medication, recounts Dr. Sanjiv Badhwar, Consultant ENT Surgeon, Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital.

Why is it bad?
You're probably wondering, how could something like snoozing that involves catching up on some extra sleep, be bad after all? "Hitting the snooze button after the alarm goes off is not good for an individual as it disrupts the sleep pattern. After you hit snooze and drift off, your brain starts its sleep cycle all over again. The sleep cycle is composed of two parts, the REM and the NREM cycles. When the alarm goes off a second time, you're likely at an even deeper, earlier part of your sleep cycle, which results in you feeling even worse than you did the first time," explains Dr Badhwar.

How does it affect you?
Due to snoozing, there occurs sleep fragmentation, which then later gives rise to sleep deprivation, tiredness, irritation, fatigue, mood swings, etc. says Dr Anamika Rathore, consultant ENT surgeon (obstructive sleep apnoea, endoscopic surgeon), Cumballa Hill Hospital and Bombay Hospital.

A rising trend
Snoozing has become a trend, especially in youngsters with a busy schedule, who hope to have an extra 10-15 minutes of sleep by using the snooze button. This habit however, is harmful in the long run as it disrupts the sleep pattern. Instead of feeling fresh after sleep, you feel clumsy and groggy after snoozing as you go back to the initial phase of sleep, failing to complete the usual sleep cycle, informs Dr Badhwar.

Dr Rathore often encounters patients for come seeking help for disturbed sleep and later it is discovered that one of the common reasons for this was the habit of hitting the snooze button on their mobile phones. This is prevalent among individuals working in call centres, corporate arena, those who work late nights and youngsters.

Breaking the snooze habit
Dr Rathore says that on an average individuals require seven to eight hours of sleep, and one's body knows how much sleep it requires, so there's no point in snoozing. It's better to get up. It's not about increasing the quantity but rather the quality of sleep. The longer duration of time you snooze, the more discomfort later.

To get better quality of sleep, you should maintain good sleep hygiene. Instead of hitting the snooze button, try to set the alarm a few minutes later (or getting up a little earlier) and sticking to a regular sleep schedule to get a nice rhythm going. We must not forget that sleep is crucial for our body to maintain proper function and health. We are programmed to sleep every night in order to restore our bodies and minds. Our internal biological clock and the sleep-wake homeostat are the two key internal systems that largely determine the timing of our transitions from sleep to wakefulness and the other way round. Playing with this clock by snoozing is bad for health, opines Dr Bhadhwar.