[ad_1]
To find the best alarm for you, you will need to consider your personal sleep habits. If you always press the snooze button, an old-fashioned watch that doesn’t have one may be for you. If you often sleep through your alarm, an extremely powerful watch designed for heavy sleepers may be the ticket.
As for what experts use on their own nightstands, alarm clocks, which are gradually getting brighter to simulate sunrise, are becoming increasingly popular. It makes sense that they are a favorite of sleep professionals, given that there is real science that supports them. Exposure to bright light in the morning – and throughout your day – has been shown to help keep your circadian rhythm in the right direction (and in addition to keep your sleep-wake cycle more consistent).
Nishi Bhopal, a medical doctor and psychiatrist who specializes in sleep medicine, says she uses Philips light to help her wake up feeling more alert. “It just makes it easier for you to be awake,” she told mbg. “It’s much less annoying than an old-fashioned alarm clock or even an alarm on your phone.”
If you’ve ever heard of people using solar lamps to adjust to seasonal changes in light, these alarms work in a similar way. By mimicking the sunlight in the morning, they send a clear signal to the body that it is time to wake up and leave. “Early morning exposure to bright light stimulates photoreceptors in our retina, stopping melatonin levels and allowing cortisol to rise,” immunologist Heather Modei, MD, told mbg earlier. “It also increases the production of serotonin – one of our good mood hormones.”
Heavy sleepers and those who wear eye masks in bed can program these watches to emit noise. But Bhopal is a fan of simply using the lighting function to gently maintain its circadian rhythm and ensure that this is always an important regulation of sleep and awakening.
[ad_2]
Source link