We’re all guilty of it: pressing the snooze button in the mornings.  What’s the harm in delaying the start of your morning… you need the extra z’s.

It turns out that pressing the snooze button on your alarm clock will actually hurt and disrupt your current stage of sleep.  Some clinicians believe that fragmented sleep is worse than no sleep at all.

Fragmented sleep can result in moodiness, cognitive problems, and trouble paying attention.  According to Dr. Robert Rosenberg, Associate Professor of Pulmonary and Internal Medicine at the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine, interrupted sleep can also harm memory function.

“If you are in REM sleep and you interrupt it with the snooze alarm, this can lead to an inability to process and reconcile emotionally laden memories from the previous day.”

If you need to press the snooze button chronically, then simply put, your body is trying to tell you that you’re not getting enough sleep.  Perhaps you may be out of sync with your internal circadian clock, you’re stressed, or unbeknownst to you, you have a sleep disorder.

If you find yourself struggling with the snooze button on your alarm clock, here are 4 remedies that will help:

Go to bed 30 minutes earlier

Turn off all blue light eitting devices – blue light delays the production of melatonin that results in lingering amounts fo the sleep hormone in your blood stream upon awakening

Putting the alarm clock where you can’t reach it

Put a coffee maker with a timer set for ten minutes before wake time and close enough so that you can smell it