Night owls can benefit from their morning alarms

• Snoozing in the morning is so good.
• However, it has the bad reputation of making us feel even worse when we finally get up.
• But this could have benefits, especially if you are a night owl.
• During REM sleep our brain consolidates our thoughts and dreams.
• REM sleep occurs during the last two hours of sleep, so extending it for 20 minutes can give us some of our most creative ideas.

Sleep hygiene is important. This is especially true if you are a night owl with a job from 9 to 5.

The world of work, in general, is simply not meant for those of us who prefer late nights and late mornings instead of getting up at dawn. This means that we have to compensate for sleep that we do not sleep in the morning by making it easy for us to drift at night.

If you're not sleeping enough, it's incredibly tempting to hit "snooze" on your alarm clock once, twice, or more times.

Read more:A disturbance of your biological clock could increase your risk of mood disorders like depression – here's why

Snoozing has a bad reputation, with some neuroscientists claiming that you sleep better without it and that these extra minutes of sleep can ruin your entire day.

But, according to psychologist Perpetua Neo, a night owl, sleeping can help consolidate our thoughts and memories, and make us more creative.

"The problem with night owls is that our paradoxical sleep is very important, and paradoxical sleep takes place in the last two hours," she told INSIDER. "If you allow yourself 20 minutes of sleep between your first and second alarms, your brain will have time to consolidate the rest of your REM sleep."

It is therefore not so much to doze as to doze off effectively. Also think of all the times you went astray for a few minutes after your first alarm. Do not you often have some of your wildest dreams?

"If your brain consolidates and restores itself, you could become really creative," Neo said. "You could drift with a really brilliant idea, and what you can do is write down your dreams and thoughts, rather than checking first on Instagram and Facebook.

"It wakes up your brain because you are already creative."

Read more:Sleeping on the weekend could be good for you, according to a new study

Another common belief about sleep patterns is that you should not sleep on the weekend. But according to some research, sleeping on weekends could offset the damage caused by lack of sleep during the week.

Sleep researchers from the Stockholm University Stress Research Institute examined data from more than 43,000 adults collected in Sweden in 1997. They then consulted the national registry of deaths to see what it was happened to participants for 13 years.

They found that adults under 65 who slept five days or less at night, seven days a week, were more likely to die prematurely than those who routinely had six or seven hours. But those who compensated for this at the end of the week while sleeping had no risk of increased mortality compared to stable sleepers.

"The results imply that short sleep (on weekdays) is not a risk factor for mortality when combined with average or long sleep over the weekend," researchers said. Torbjorn Akerstedt. "This suggests that a short sleep on weekdays can be compensated over the weekend and that this has implications for mortality."

In the sleep science community, the general advice is that consistency is essential and that nothing can replace a regular sleep pattern. Studies have shown the negative effects that a disturbed sleep cycle can have on our mental and physical health.

That is why it is important to respect night rituals, such as tidying up his phone about an hour before moving away and taking a hot shower to lower the cortisol level.

"Night owls, if we do not see a change in the first two days, we slip," said Neo. "But over time, your brain will learn when it's time to sleep and rest, so give yourself a break."