Sixty-nine per cent suffer from a milder form, of at least one hour.
#Snooze 5 minutes windows#
The difference between one’s actual, socially mandated wake-up time and one’s natural, biologically optimal wake-up time is something that Till Roenneberg, a professor of chronobiology at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, calls “social jetlag.” It’s a measurement not of sleep duration but of sleep timing: Are we sleeping in the windows of time that are best for our bodies? According to Roenneberg’s most recent estimates, based on a database of more than sixty-five thousand people, approximately a third of the population suffers from extreme social jetlag-an average difference of over two hours between their natural waking time and their socially obligated one. No matter what, our brains take far longer than we might expect to get up to speed. Eating breakfast, showering, or turning on all the lights for maximum morning brightness didn’t mitigate the results. While the participants said they felt awake after two-thirds of an hour, their cognitive faculties didn’t entirely catch up for several hours. In one study that monitored people for three days in a row, the sleep researchers Charles Czeisler and Megan Jewett and their colleagues at Harvard Medical School found that sleep inertia took anywhere from two to four hours to disappear completely. Other research has found that sleep inertia can last two hours or longer. Little wonder that it’s not always the optimal one. Whether or not to hit the snooze button is just about the first decision we make. In fact, according to Kenneth Wright, a neuroscientist and chronobiology expert, “Cognition is best several hours prior to habitual sleep time, and worst near habitual wake time.” In the grip of sleep inertia, we may well do something we know we shouldn’t. As a result, our decisions are neither rational nor optimal. Even simple tasks, like finding and turning on the light switch, become far more complicated. In those early waking minutes, our memory, reaction time, ability to perform basic mathematical tasks, and alertness and attention all suffer. But our cortical regions, especially the prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain involved in decision-making and self-control), take longer to come on board. Our brain-stem arousal systems (the parts of the brain responsible for basic physiological functioning) are activated almost instantly. While we may feel that we wake up quickly enough, transitioning easily between sleep mode and awake mode, the process is in reality far more gradual. The more abruptly you are awakened, the more severe the sleep inertia. First given a name in 1976, sleep inertia refers to that period between waking and being fully awake when you feel groggy. One of the consequences of waking up suddenly, and too early, is a phenomenon called sleep inertia. (Ian Parker wrote about the development of a new drug for insomnia in the magazine last week.) If you manage to drift off again, you are likely plunging your brain back into the beginning of the sleep cycle, which is the worst point to be woken up-and the harder we feel it is for us to wake up, the worse we think we’ve slept.
But what you’re actually doing is making the wake-up process more difficult and drawn out. It may seem like you’re giving yourself a few extra minutes to collect your thoughts. Just another couple of minutes, you think. Then you throw out your arm and hit the snooze button, silencing the noise for at least a few moments.
Depending on when you went to bed, what day of the week it is, and how deeply you were sleeping, you may not understand where you are, or why there’s an infernal chiming sound. Instead, the ring of an alarm clock probably jerks you out of sleep. On a typical workday morning, if you’re like most people, you don’t wake up naturally.
0 kommentar(er)
