Despite interrupting sleep at the end of the night and going back to sleep, no real difference was found in the feeling of tiredness or in the tests.
Who hasn’t hit the snooze button when waking up? According to a Swedish sleep study, falling back asleep for a few minutes after your alarm goes off in the morning isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
These researchers from Stockholm University found that few studies looked at waking up in the morning, so they conducted two studies published this Wednesday. The first focused on the profile of snooze users and surveyed 1,732 people.
“We found that generally young people used ‘snooze’ and that they were night owls,” explained Tina Sundelin, a sleep researcher at Stockholm University, who found this conclusion not surprising.
While tiredness is the most commonly cited reason, some responded that staying in bed for a few more minutes felt like “a luxury.”
Cognitive tests
The second study focused on the effects of going back to sleep in the morning and examined 31 people in different situations: uninterrupted sleep and waking up immediately or first waking up half an hour before actually getting up.
“What’s interesting is that those who used ‘snooze’ slept, on average, only six minutes less than others,” Sundelin said, concluding that they therefore largely fell back asleep in the half hour before getting up.
They were then given cognitive tests such as math or a memory test.
Despite interrupting sleep at the end of the night, no real difference was found in feelings of tiredness or in the tests.
“They even performed better on certain tests,” the researcher adds, concluding that “the most noticeable effect (of going back to sleep early) is that it is not negative.”
In recent years, several studies have found that using the “snooze” function is harmful to health, causing cardiovascular problems but also the feeling of having had a bad night’s sleep.