Your Snooze Button Is Making You Tired
By MAKENOIZE MTL
Despite getting eight hours of sleep, do you still wake up feeling like death on Monday mornings? Are you tired, irritable, and in need of several cups of coffee in order to stay awake, let alone get into a creative headspace before noon? You’re likely experiencing a case of social jet lag, caused by waking up at different times and constantly hitting that snooze button over the course of the week.
The answer is in the habits of those who don’t even need an alarm clock, like Circa CEO Matt Galligan who is wide awake at 6:30 a.m every single day. “If I go to a bachelor party in Vegas and I’m out until 6 in the morning, I still wake up at 6:30 a.m.,” Galligan, recently told Fast Company. “I can’t change.”
People like Galligan seem like freaks of nature, but it is possible to teach your body to work on a schedule. A piece on Mental Floss reveals the science behind this practice:
Your body is most efficient when there’s a routine to follow. So if you hit the hay the same time each night and awake the same time each morning, your body locks that behavior in. And that’s where things get sciency…If you follow a diligent sleep routine—waking up the same time every day—your body learns to increase your PER levels in time for your alarm. About an hour before you’re supposed to wake up, PER levels rise (along with your body temperature and blood pressure). To prepare for the stress of waking, your body releases a cocktail of stress hormones, like cortisol. Gradually, your sleep becomes lighter and lighter.
While the easy way out of social jet lag may appear to be either getting up early on weekends or sleeping in later on workdays, your best bet for true reform is to set an alarm for the same time every morning for 90 days and resist the snooze.
