Posted on 12/24/2023 8:34:50 PM PST by ConservativeMind
Your morning alarm clock might not just be annoying. It could be raising your blood pressure, putting you at greater risk for adverse cardiovascular events, such as stroke and heart attack, according to research.
Yeonsu Kim studied how being forced awake contributes to morning blood pressure surge, an increase in blood pressure that happens when people move quickly from being asleep to awake.
Kim studied 32 participants over two days. The first night, they were told to awaken naturally, without an alarm. The second night, they were instructed to set an alarm to awaken them after only five hours of sleep.
Kim compared morning blood pressure surge measures between the natural and forced awakening scenarios. Her research showed that those who were forced awake had a morning blood pressure surge that was 74% greater than those who awoke naturally—evidence of a link between short sleep duration, forced awakening and morning blood pressure surge.
When morning blood pressure surge is excessive, it can activate the sympathetic nervous system, which pumps harder and stronger. That can cause fatigue, shortness of breath, anxiety, neck stiffness, and, when acute, nosebleeds and headaches.
Evidence has also shown that people who sleep fewer than seven hours a night (as one in three Americans do) are more likely to experience greater morning blood pressure surge.
Kim's study builds on existing research about the best way to wake up. A 2020 study found that waking up to melodic sounds (like a song you can hum along to) helps people avoid sleep inertia, a kind of persistent grogginess that can last up to two hours. In another study in 2021, researchers learned that exposure to light in the morning tells your body to slow its melatonin production, helping people wake up and stay awake.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
My cat is my alarm clock.
If you have cats, there’s no need for an alarm clock.
True that.
I once woke somebody up by playing "Paralyzed" by The Legendary Stardust Cowboy.
Yes, it seems many of the MedEx articles posted are of limited value or misinterpret the underlying study(or both?)
Or get a sunlight alarm clock. We got one of those, half an hour before you set the alarm it begins “sunrise” as light turns on dimly and slowly gets up to full light by the time you set it and then bird chirpy sounds are the audible part. It’s pretty awesome. Very mellow way to wake up.
While this study is kind of weak it is actually pretty well settled. Some version of this study happens every few years, the alarm clock punch is bad for you.
They are still used in Medicine for a specific reason-when you page people, they all receive the page at the same time. If they issued cell phones to use as “pagers”, cell phones do NOT receive them at the same time due to the variability of cell phone traffic.
If you have say, a Code Team in a hospital that is expected to resuscitate a patient with a stopped heart, there may be an unpredictable delay involved which could prove fatal. So they use pagers to ensure everyone receives the page at the same time.
Hospitals are notorious for cell phone dead zones. Boosters can be installed to boost the signals, but it costs money and is specific only to certain cell phone providers. (Not necessarily an issue if the hospital is providing the cell phones
Also, pagers can go weeks or months without the battery running down, where phones need to be charged every day.
At least this is what I have been told...:)
Honestly, I hate pagers with a white hot burning passion. Hate them. Fortunately, at this point in my career, I am on-call 24x7, but my team only pages me if there is an issue they cannot figure out, and they try like hell not to page me.
Sigh.
I have occasionally been a beast when paged over the years, something I am not proud of. (as I said, I don’t wake up well at 3 AM) I am famous among my friends for throwing my pager over a house at a party one time.
My Dad would raile the window shade, shining the rising sun directly in my face.
That and “Let’s go.”
Holy Crap! Imagine all the cardiac events that have been triggered since the first alarm clocks came on the scene in 1787! I think I will file this ‘alarming’ study in the circular file.
We should be more like the Europeans. A generous welfare state. The Americans are responsible for collective defense.
That’s been my secret...go to bed early. Plenty of sleep!
“As a kid on the farm, I awoke to my dad yelling up the stairs, “
As a kid on the farm, I WAS AWAKENED BY my dad yelling up the stairs,
Whatever happened to AWAKENED?
Thank you for the english tutorial.
I should have wrote what a kid on the farm would have said: “I waked up when my pa yelled upstairs”
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