AUSTIN (KXAN) — Nearly a third of adults say they get less than seven hours of sleep a night.
Most are so sleep-deprived, they have to hit the snooze button over and over again just to get up on time — but you may be hurting yourself in the long-run.
Kelsey-Sebold Pulmonary Critical Care and Sleep Medicine Doctor Puneet Patni says while there is no right way to wake up, “If you’re snoozing so that you are waking up every 10 minutes or so for hours, you’re probably not getting great quality sleep. Some people might set a few alarms where there is an alarm for an hour earlier and thirty minutes later and so on and that’s probably not as bad. But it’s still probably not as good as uninterrupted sleep.”
The problem with interrupted sleep is that you could be being forced awake during the third stage of sleep, which is restorative, or REM, says Patni. “[REM sleep] is great for memory consolidation and learning, and you could be interrupting that.”
Patni says it’s important to get seven to nine hours each night and teenagers should aim for eight to 10.
