Almost everyone over the age of sixteen uses an alarm clock to ensure they wake up in time to leave for school, work, or other commitments. It is no secret that no one likes to wake up to the sound of loud buzzing or ringing, but it is hard to argue against its effectiveness. Although waking up to an alarm is efficient in getting places on time, it has been proven that it is not exactly healthy. Recently, it has been discovered that waking up to an alarm can disrupt important sleep cycles. It has also been linked to high blood pressure and obesity. One might ask themselves how else they would get up. There are alternatives to using an alarm clock like the circadian rhythm, an internal clock, which could wake one up naturally with no health side effects. There are two main types of sleep, REM (rapid eye movement) and NREM (non-REM). During NREM the body and brain relax, this is when one gets the deepest sleep. REM is the opposite. (Mann, par 5) It is a very active sleep state in which the muscles twitch constantly and the brain shows high levels of electrical activity. At night we constantly move between these two states. Slow wave sleep occurs more frequently at the start of the night whilst REM sleep increases as morning approaches. In order to feel sleep’s full restorative benefits you need to get your full quota of both REM and NREM. If you set your alarm much earlier than you intend to get up so that you can keep pressing snooze, you could be missing out on vital REM in the morning. Because once your alarm goes off, you've already disrupted your sleep cycle, and you're unlikely to fall back into REM again. Disturbing someone’s sleep in this way can impair their mental functionality throughout the day which leads to problems with memory, reaction time, and even emotional state. Waking at an inappropriate time causes sleep inertia – the groggy state before one is fully awake. Sleep inertia normally lasts for just a few minutes but can sometimes last for hours. It is worst if one wakes up during NREM, where studies have shown the effects can be worse than being legally drunk. Americans recently voted alarm clocks as one of their most hated inventions. It does not take a doctor