You probably know that sleep occurs in cycles—a complex series of sleep-types with different neurological features and benefits. The two most important are rapid eye movement (REM) and deep sleep. The first lets your brain sift through the pervious day’s activities, while the second provides the pure rest your body requires to function. The two come and go during the night, and the duration of each stage varies from person to person. But we all experience more deep sleep early in the night, and more REM sleep before natural awakening, triggered by shifting chemical balances.
During the hour or two before you wake, then, you primarily have REM sleep. You dream a lot during this period, and consolidate recent memories. Weirdly, this means that your body does most of the processing of the preceding day’s events just before you wake naturally. The earlier you interrupt that process—by, say, setting an alarm earlier than you need so you can snooze away for a half hour—the less time you give yourself to process those experiences. Research shows that cutting into REM sleep like that can blunt your mental function during the day.
A fundamental belief about the snooze button is that the short snatches of sleep still help the body rest. Studies into sleep fragmentation suggest otherwise—sleep which is interrupted every minute or every ten can lead to “sleepiness-related daytime impairment” when compared to the equivalent amount of uninterrupted sleep. In other words, there is less value in snooze sleep and, if too much of your bed time is spent snoozing, you can expect impairments in your memory, reaction time, comprehension and attention.
Author: Jamie Condliffe
Continue reading @ http://gizmodo.com/5949809/why-the-snooze-button-is-ruining-your-sleep
