It’s back to school and waking up can be difficult for some… There is then a great temptation to program your alarm several times, a few minutes apart or to use the “snooze” button which makes the alarm ring again. . Why are these practices not recommended? And what should they be replaced with? Advice from Dr Liath Guetta, sleep specialist.
When you wake up, when you have to get out of bed but you’re still feeling tired, you often just want to postpone waking up using the “snooze” function. Those to whom this happens regularly also use the trick of setting several alarm clocks to ring, a few minutes apart.
A cycle that repeats itself, endlessly
If this sounds like you, there is only one piece of advice: stop doing that! Indeed, resetting your alarm each time gives a short respite to your body and your brain, which plunges back into light sleep. But when the new ringtone rings, you won’t feel any more ready to get up.
When asked, Dr. Liath Guetta, sleep doctor, confirms. “With the holidays, we tend to be late phase, that is to say we go to bed later and get up later than usual, during this period. So we have difficulty getting up in the morning, at the start of the school year” she explains first of all. “The goal is therefore to reset your sleep cycle as quickly as possible. To do this, you have to get up at a fixed time.” advises the specialist.
The lying position, a position to take for sleeping only
To get back into shape when you wake up, or at least not be completely flat, you must also get up directly after hearing it. “Our brain associates lying down with sleep. In the morning, you should therefore not lie awake, nor during the night, during insomnia for example. insisted Liath Guetta.
“To reframe your sleep, we go to bed when we are tired, in the evening, but really when we ‘sick’, not before. And in the morning, we get up at the first ring, without delaying getting up or using several wake-ups. We can do this at the last minute, depending on the time we take in the morning to get ready. But we definitely don’t delay getting up.”
Consult a doctor online for your sleep problems
Here is an object to invest in, to make waking up easier
If this seems impossible to you, Dr. Guetta has a final tip to help those whose getting up is a real ordeal. “It is possible to use a dawn simulator to make it easier to wake up. It is a lamp which artificially creates a dawn, approximately thirty minutes before waking up, with light which gradually increases. All my patients who use it say that it works very well, for gentle getting up.“.
