This simple habit can make all the difference, according to experts.
The world’s population is struggling to achieve recommendations in terms of sleep and sleeping between 7 and 9 hours per night. This lack of rest can cause many health problems: deterioration of mental health, increased risk of cardiovascular disease, alteration of cognitive function or drop in productivity. To remedy this, researchers are trying to find effective solutions, and a recent American study may well have one.
The scientists of the Mass General Brigham Hospital, in Boston (United States), looked at the impact of the alarms of awakening on the quality of sleep. To conduct their study, they used data from the sleep tracking application Sleep cycle. The night habits of more than 21,000 people around the world have been analyzed, representing 3 million nights in total. “We have found that more than half of the sleep cycles end with a wake -up ringtone, and that users spend an average of 11 minutes between two alarms before waking up” Explained Professor Rebecca Robbins, the main author of the study. This deadline corresponds to a succession of alarm clocks and sleeping before rising, a practice known as “snooze” which consists in pressing the alarm clock to postpone it. Not recommended by sleep experts, it remains very widespread: 56% of the subjects used it.
“Unfortunately, the repetition of the alarm disrupts some of the most important sleep phases. The hours preceding the alarm are rich in paradoxical sleep. Pressing the repetition interrupts these sleep phases and generally only offers us light sleep between repetitions” warns the sleep specialist. For scientists, you should not go back to sleep after the first alarm but “Set the alarm of the alarm clock at the last time of realistic alarm clock in order to benefit from a sleep as complete as possible” they explain in the journal Scientific Reports. Concretely, if you can get up at 7:30 am to go at 8:30 am, do not put your alarm clock for 6:30 or 7 a.m. to push it back several times but at 7:30 am and get up directly.
Finally, the researchers found that going to bed earlier than usual was associated with a lower use of alarm reminders, while going to bed later that usual was associated with greater use. It is recommended to put yourself in bed from the first signs of sleep: falling eyes, yawning …
