Why do we find it so hard to wake up in the mornings?

For many of us, there’s no worse sound than the alarm each morning.

You might even hit the snooze button, to delay the start of your day a little longer.

We know our beds are usually warm, cosy and comfy - but why is it that some of us find it so hard to get out of bed in the morning? And what can we do to help us kickstart the day?

BBC Bitesize spoke to sleep physiologist and director of the Sleepyhead Clinic, Stephanie Romiszewski to find out.

In the bleak midwinter

You may find it particularly tougher to get out of bed in the morning during winter – especially when it’s cold outside.

It’s a natural reaction to want to avoid those chilly starts when your duvet is calling – but there’s a little more to it, as Stephanie explains.

“In winter, we’re not getting as much light. Light reduces our melatonin levels but without it, those levels are increased.

“Melatonin is the sleepy hormone, like an alert to your brain that it should start winding down and making you sleepy. If you’re starting to get all those signals at the wrong time of day, you’ll feel strange, but especially in the winter mornings when there is no light.

“Then, you have no external influence to get you up and if you rely on them to dictate your behaviour, you’re probably not going to wake up at the same time every day.”

This is why you might find it that bit easier to get up in the summer - the light is helping your body wake up.

You snooze, you lose

A lie in and breakfast in bed at the weekend is seen as a bit of a luxury. But in fact, it might be doing us more damage than we realise if it becomes a more regular occurrence.

Stephanie explains that frequent extra morning naps are actually being used to compensate for a poor sleep schedule.

She said: “It’s because of how we treat sleep the rest of the time. If you’re constantly getting fragmented sleep, or you can’t get to sleep until very late or it’s broken sleep, of course waking up in the morning is going to be tough because you’re not getting your sleep needs.

“If you’re waking in the deep stage of sleep, or REM, then you’re going to feel strange compared to if you woke in a light stage of sleep, which makes it harder.”

But if we fancy a little longer in bed each morning, what’s the harm?

Stephanie says getting up later and later could actually start to cause even more sleep problems.

“If you’re just lying in for no reason and diluting your sleep, that isn’t good for your sleep quality.

“By compensating for a lack of sleep, or your expectation of what you feel you should be getting, you’re actually making the problem worse.

“You teach your brain you don’t want to have a consolidated block of sleep at night anymore, you’re happy to have broken sleep, or later mornings, so your brain doesn’t need to give you the right night time sleep anymore. You are reinforcing that pattern into your body.”

Attack the day?

So the reason you’re finding it harder and harder to get out of bed on time each morning might just be because of those first few times you delayed getting up.

But there’s no need to panic – there are a few simple things you can do to get your morning starts back on track.

Unfortunately – if you like a later start – the first thing to try is waking up when you’re supposed to.

Stephanie said: “Even if you had a bad night, or several bad nights, if you woke yourself up at the same time every single day, you would start to feel refreshed in the morning.

“Your body would learn to wake up at the same time every morning, your brain would start to understand you want to be up at this time and you want to be alert.

“It would increase your cortisol (a stress hormone, that also controls our sleep cycles), reduce your melatonin and help you feel alert.”

To help reduce the melatonin levels, Stephanie suggests waking to bright light exposure – which can be replicated through lamps or lights, rather than you having to leave your curtains open.

If you’re looking to make a permanent change to your morning routine, it might also be worth taking a look at how you’re going to bed – and again, light plays a big part.

“Reducing the brightness of any screens you’re using is a good start,” says Stephanie. “Try using lamps instead of overhead lights.

“That kind of stuff is helpful, but not looking at your phone has more to do with the stimulation your brain gets from looking at your phone.

“Your brain will associate your phone and things like that with what you do during the day. Even the mere act of picking it up is sending signals to your brain that you want to be active again.”

So, if you want to find it easier to get up in the morning, a light and no snoozing could be the way forward. But if you’re not sure that will work for you, Stephanie says there’s no need to worry.

“We are a whole society designed around being a night owl, not a morning type. We build all these behaviours around influencing and reinforcing being a night owl – and of course a night owl is never going to wake up at the same time every day.

“At the end of the day, it’s not the end of the world if you lie in every now and again.

“But if it’s a consistent pattern and you’re using it specifically to compensate, you might want to take a look at that and think about why you’re going it all the time. And if you then want to feel better and refreshed, you might have to stop hitting that snooze button.”

This article was published in February 2021 and last updated in October 2023