To many high school students, sleep is a foreign concept. When people don’t get enough sleep, their brain doesn’t work properly and they put themselves at a risk for sickness. To make sure you are at your best everyday, it’s important to get enough sleep. For teenagers the recommended amount of sleep is 8-9 hours a night-so it is important to go to bed early.

There are four main stages of sleep. REM sleep is the most important because that is when you get the best sleep. Every person has their own internal clock so what sleep cycle works best for you isn’t the same for everyone else. A difficult time for most students is when their alarm starts to ring.

Most student’s desired reaction is to press the snooze button right away, but that can do more harm than good. About an hour before you get up your body starts to enter a lighter sleep and a lot of times an alarm cuts that time short. Usually when this happens you wake up feeling groggy; this state is called sleep inertia. The problem with pressing the snooze button is if you begin to fall asleep again you will wake up even more fatigued. This is because your body might be entering a different stage of sleep, so instead of preparing to wake yourself you are really getting ready to go to bed.

There are different ways you can deal with waking up. Instead of pressing the snooze button the best thing to do is just get up, but that isn’t always easy. Another way to help you is by getting technology involved. Certain apps other than just your alarm clock can help you wake up. One for example is called sleep cycle.

This app tracks your movement throughout the night, identifying how deep of a sleep you are in. When you set your alarm for this app it will give you a 30 minute window to have your alarm go off. This app can identify your lightest stage stage of sleep so when your alarm goes off you are more awake.

If you don’t get enough sleep and you are tired during the day, skip the coffee and the energy drinks and go straight to bed. Many people think that naps can make you tired, but really they have just been napping for too long. The best nap is a power nap which is usually no more than 30 minutes. By taking a shorter nap you will most likely of just gone through your first two stages of your sleep cycle. Waking out of these first two stages have shown to increase memory, cognitive function, allow you to retain more information, and make you less tired. So next time you are tired taking a short nap is the way to go!