How Long It Actually Takes To Fully Wake Up From Sleep In The Morning
By Lela S. <3<3<3<3<3
Let’s take any random weekday. At precisely six-thirty, you get woken up by your phone alarm that’s somehow set to some super dissonant ringtone that you don’t remember setting. Shaken and a bit grumpy, you press the snooze button, and get nine sweet, sweet minutes of sleep that feel as good as if you had gained nine lives.
Repeat this process three more times, and before you know it, it’s seven o’clock. You jump out of bed with your drooping eyes half open, turn on Apple Fitness Plus on the TV, and remember that you don’t have any time to do a workout, what with your excess snoozing. So you trudge back upstairs.
You stumble into the shower, turn on the water (which is freezing cold), and use one of your mini homemade bath bombs to wash yourself instead of actually using soap. Without drying yourself, you put on your school uniform and waddle down the stairs to go eat breakfast, still wet.
Performing this supposedly healthy morning routine, you might be physically awake (or you might not, who knows), but if you attempted to solve a math equation or explain a complex topic immediately post-snooze, your brain might say otherwise. This is called sleep inertia.
According to Well + Good, sleep inertia, like its physics namesake, means that an object at rest (in this case, you) stays at rest unless acted upon by an outside force (say, an alarm clock). While sleep inertia endures, you may feel drowsy, disoriented, or just not all there, which is what happened in the scenario above.
Sleep inertia lasts for about fifteen to thirty minutes, but a full brain recovery - that is, feeling awake and up to performing your regular physical and mental tasks - takes around an hour. However, most people I know, including me, only completely wake up at around noon.
Does this sound like you? If it does, there are a few possible causes for this issue. The most common factor is sleep deprivation. In my case, I’m starting my first year of high school, so there’s a lot of adaptation to be done. I have to study more and more, which means I need to sleep later and later…
The solution? Build your schedule around your sleep, not the other way around. Making a point of going to bed around the same time each night, clocking eight to ten hours of sleep, and then waking up around the same time each morning can also help align your sleep with your natural circadian rhythm.
As well as that, you can also try to get some sunlight first thing in the morning. Yes, drag yourself out of bed, go out the door to the backyard, and let our sun’s magic sink in. This alerts the brain that it’s time to wake up by naturally shutting off the production of melatonin.
Did you like this article? Take a look at our list of sixty-nine autumn activities to do this season!