Do you hit the snooze button in the morning? That extra ten minutes is like heaven, anything you can squeeze in is, but are these stolen minutes of sleep worth it? Or are they adding on to the exhaustion that already plagues most of us? Studies say that those extra minutes of sleep tend to do you more harm than good, and most people don’t realize it.  

As high school students, we all get sleep deprived. Texting, homework, procrastination, pretty much anything can keep us from getting a decent night’s sleep. Nothing, nothing, is worse than having to wake up and run on three-four hours of sleep all day at school (although naturally, your brain is just barely functioning on all the Red Bull and coffee you can afford at that point). The morning of doing this, we often tend to drift in and out of sleep, something called “drockling”. This happens because your body has several different mechanisms to wake up and get going. One of these is turning up your core temperature about two hours before you’re ready to wake up so you’re more alert. If you aren’t getting enough sleep at night, chances are your alarm is going off while your body temperature is still in deep sleep range. That’s when the air in your room feels punishingly cold and the covers seem cozier than ever.  

So why stop with the snooze button?

When you hit the snooze bar and let yourself sleep for another 10, 20, 30 minutes, not only are you throwing off your internal clock, your body thinks “false alarm, I guess I didn’t need to do anything after all” and settles back in. Once the alarm goes off a second (or third) time, it takes the body by surprise and results in that groggy, fuzzy feeling called sleep inertia. The more you snooze, the more confused your body gets (“are we getting up or not?”) and you end up even more out it by the time you get out of bed.

Getting out of bed the first time every time may not be a realistic expectation for most of us, and getting a full eight hours in seems even less achievable, but hopefully the next time you find yourself drockling after a night of doing whatever, you’ll think about getting up and moving! Take care, Cougars!