Sleeping is the besstttttt.
Waking up is the WOOORRRRSTTTT.
JUST FIVE MORE MINUTESSSSS, Mom.
Which never helps, does it?
I had a roommate in college who's alarm went off at 7:15 for his 8am class.
The radio, as loud as the volume would go.
He didn't even flinch (or wake up), but I almost hit the ceiling it scared me so much.
We've done a lot of videos on sleep we even have a sleep playlist but WAKING UP…
Some days, I just DON'T WANNA GET UP.
Social jetlag, or the idea we HAVE to wake up before our natural rhythms WANT us to wake
up affects 70 percent of the population according to a study in Current Biology.
And difficulty waking up is called sleep inertia.
A 2013 study in PlosOne describes it as, "a temporary period of reduced alertness and
impaired performance."
Scientific symptoms of sleep inertia are poor memory and reaction time, inability to perform
basic math and the suffering of alertness or attention.
These symptoms can persist for an hour, and usually occurs when you wake up during slow-wave
sleep.
Sleep comes in order across four stages: Stage One is the transition from wakefulness to
a light sleep.
During this 5 to 10 minute stage, the electrical signals pulsing through your brain form theta
waves.
The next 20 minutes is Stage Two; the brain produces rapid bursts of activity called sleep
spindles, and then the heart rate slows and body temperature dips.
Stage Three is slow wave sleep or delta sleep.
This lasts about an hour, and brain activity comes in the form of delta waves.
People here normally aren't responsive when you call their name; and abnormal behaviors
like bedwetting or sleepwalking are part of the end of this Stage.
Stage Four is the famous REM sleep, when dreams happen!
When you fall asleep you go through stage one, and then back to Two.
Then Two, Three, Four… back to Two.
You'll do this four or five times.
If your alarm goes off when you're in stage three, the deepest of sleep, then you'll be
jolted awake.
And you'll get the worst of sleep inertia!
This is usually when people describe feeling like they were "hit by a truck."
The hormones surging through your body keeping you in deep sleep are still floating around,
affecting your now AWAKE body.
Sleep inertia is still being studied, it was only named in the late 70s, so, say it with
me now, MORE RESEARCH IS NEEDED!
But what we DO know, is the best medicine is to get out of bed and turn on the lights,
because the retina is DIRECTLY tied to the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN).
The SCN controls our sleep-wake cycle and the release of melatonin, which is a hormone
that triggers the sleeping part of that cycle.
Your phone doesn't count though.
It's true that at night the blue light from phone and tablet screens mess with the SCN's
regulation of the sleep/wake cycle.
(So don't use them before sleep), but a study in PlosOne found that increasing blue light
doesn't increase brain alertness during sleep inertia, so grabbing your phone first thing
won't save you.
Also, the snooze button is NOT your friend.
If you're jolted from slow-wave sleep and allow your brain to drop into sleep again,
you'll start the whole cycle over; causing you to feel even WORSE.
And don't set alarms every half-hour either, you're not gradually waking yourself up, you're
interrupting and restarting your sleep over and over.
I'm guilty of this, and so are many of you; but it's the worst.
Like EVERYTHING, having a healthy sleep/wake cycle requires effort -- like running a race,
we have to train to be good at it.
Waking up is no different.
Set one alarm and make yourself wake up when it goes off.
Take down the blackout curtains so you get some daylight and your retinas will tell your
SCN it's wakeup time.
Wake up on the weekend too, so you don't throw off your sleep schedule!
A morning routine is the best; and everyone is different, but luckily, wakefulness is
easy to train.
But only you can do it.
I used to be a night owl, but having to be up to make DNews for you every morning completely
changed me.
And… you know what?
I kind of love it.