Should You Hit the Snooze Button?
Most snoozers can rest easy, new research suggests. But snoozing should set off alarms for anyone who feels seriously tired or irritable during the day.
Waking up is hard to do. More than half of working adults and university students say they habitually use the snooze button to catch a few extra Zs. If you’re a snoozer, it’s probably not something you should lose too much sleep over, new research suggests — so long as you don’t suffer other symptoms of poor sleep.
Given a paucity of research on the topic, there’s no conclusive science on whether snoozing is healthy or not. But the new study, published in the Journal of Sleep Research, finds that people who routinely use the snooze function lose only about six minutes of sleep, and the snoozing appears to ease the transition from sound sleep to being fully awake and alert, resulting in higher scores on cognitive tests in the early morning.
“The findings indicate that there is no reason to stop snoozing in the morning if you enjoy it, at least not for snooze times around 30 minutes,” said study team member Tina Sundelin, PhD, a Stockholm University researcher who studies the effects of sleep loss. “In fact, it may even help those with morning drowsiness to be slightly more awake once…
