What's the Negative Impact of Hitting the Snooze Button?

We’ve all been there: it’s early on a Monday morning, and you’re dreading going to work. “Manic Monday” starts playing in your head, and you decide a few extra minutes won’t hurt. But don’t hit that snooze button just yet.

There is actually harm in snoozing too long after your alarm goes off. Pressing the snooze button every once in awhile won’t do much harm, but making a habit of it can actually make you feel more tired during the day.

Before you wake up, you’ve typically just finished the REM cycle. So if you hit snooze as soon as your alarm goes off, your body and brain go right back into the REM cycle. As your alarm continues to go off and you keep hitting snooze, you repeatedly go in and out of this cycle. When you finally do wake up and stay up, you’ll wake up in the middle of the REM cycle. Waking up during this cycle will leave you feeling very drowsy.

Luckily, there are some products that can help prevent this. For example, Eight’s smart alarm can wake you up within a half hour of your alarm so you wake up during your lightest sleep stage feeling refreshed. As long as you don’t hit snooze, there’s no worry of waking up groggy in the middle of REM.

However, there’s another negative result of snoozing. Usually your body is ready to get up when your alarm goes off (assuming you didn’t stay up until 2am the night before binging Netflix). However, continually hitting snooze can throw your body’s natural rhythm out of sync. This will lead to difficulty falling asleep at night because your body doesn’t know when it’s time to sleep or be awake.

As hard as it is to hear, the less you hit snooze, the better. Waking up early is never fun, but after awhile it will become easier and more natural.

But...the best and easiest way to improve your sleep? The temperature adjusting Eight Sleep Pod 3.