You’re more likely to experience cognitive benefits such as improved memory and concentration when you wake up in response to light rather than sound.Studies suggest your mood on waking will be improved when using a light-based alarm clock to wake up.The effects of sleep inertia are reduced when using a light-based alarm, partly because the light is less likely to wake you during deep sleep, meaning you feel fresher at the start of the day.Light-based alarm clocks typically work by raising the intensity of the light they emit shortly before your desired waking time, so as to mimic the effect of a rising sun, giving a more gradual “waking up” process that is more in tune with your sleep cycle. This is because the human body is remarkably sensitive to light and dark it cues the release of hormones associated with wakefulness in bright environments, and sleepiness in dark environments. The light-based alarm clockĪ light-based alarm clock is a more natural alternative to a sound-based alarm clock. So it’s only reasonable to ask “surely there must be a better way to wake up?” Indeed there is, a light-based alarm clock, or dawn simulating light. This leads to an awful start to the day on top of a worsening of existing sleep deprivation. This means that when their alarm does sound and they wake up, their symptoms of sleep inertia will be severe. being in a job that requires them to be awake for long periodsīecause of these factors, it is likely that these people will spend more of their time asleep in a deeper stage of sleep.going to bed late and having to wake up early.Many people are sleep deprived due to their sleep cycle conflicting with their daily schedule because of factors like: Multiple factors influence the severity of sleep inertia, but the most critical is the stage of sleep that you wake from the deeper the stage of sleep that has been interrupted, the worse the resulting sleep inertia will be.įor example, if you were to wake from N3 (deep sleep), you would have more severe sleep inertia than someone woken from N1 (light sleep).īecause we don’t know what stage of sleep we’ll be in when a traditional alarm clock sounds and that the severity of sleep inertia on waking depends on the stage of sleep we wake up from, we can’t know just how bad an episode of sleep inertia will be from day to day. In some cases, the symptoms of sleep inertia are similar to those of spending the previous night awake- it’s like being sleep deprived after sleeping! Typically, these effects only last a few minutes into waking but have been reported to persist for as long as four hours. feelings of disorientation and confusion and.Sleep inertia is a state of reduced mental and physical performance that occurs after waking and is characterised by: However, there is a problem with not taking account of the stage of sleep you’re in prior to waking and instead waking at a specific time this is due to something called sleep inertia. This is why noise is the waking device of choice used in most alarm clocks. Now, a good alarm clock will wake you up regardless of what stage of sleep you might be in so that you can go about your day, and loud noises are a sufficiently alarming(!) way to rouse a person from any stage of sleep. The first stage of non-REM sleep (N1) is the easiest to wake from and N3 is the most difficult. amount of body and eye movement, breathing rate as well as the ease from which you can wake from them. Sleep has a number of stages to it, each with their own distinct function and features, e.g. Let’s take a look at the science behind why light based alarms are so effective. The second best option is to use a light-based alarm clock. Whether you’re an early bird, night owl, shift worker or anything in between and want to be at your best throughout the day, it’s best to train yourself not to use any sort of alarm at all (a hard task, and very likely to result in you waking up later than you’d like to begin with). In isolated cases, this has led to reactions like seizures and irregular heartbeat but, for most of us, the reaction is not that extreme. This solution has been employed for hundreds, if not thousands of years to bring ourselves into wakefulness.
Most people will use a sound-based alarm to shock themselves out of sleep. If you’ve ever felt groggy, weak, unable to concentrate and generally “a little off” after waking up, it might just be time to consider how you wake up.
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