Thursday's Health Report: Hitting the snooze button may be in the way of healthier sleep habits
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BATON ROUGE — If you need to set more than one alarm to make sure you wake up in the morning, you may need to reassess your sleep habits.
"My general advice is that you set one alarm. The more alarms you have, the harder it's going to be for you to wake up in the morning,” sleep expert Alicia Roth said.
The more times you hit the snooze button, the more you are interrupting your sleep cycle. It is best to set your alarm for the time you have to wake up.
If you are used to multiple alarms, you may want to slowly work your way down to one over time. You can also try setting up your alarm clock so that you have to get out of bed to shut it off.
Keeping your sleep schedule on the weekends the same as during the week can be helpful as well.
"So, a lot of us have a tendency to go to bed later and wake up later on weekends than on weekdays. That makes it really difficult to wake up on Monday morning, and Tuesday morning, and might prompt us to have multiple alarms or multiple snoozes,” Roth said.
An underlying sleep disorder could be the reason you find it difficult to get out of bed in the morning. If this is an issue impacting your everyday life, experts say it may be time to see a sleep specialist.