Three main reasons: 1. If you’re sleeping 8 hours normally and one day decide to sleep for longer, you end up disrupting your natural circadian rhythm, which leaves your body in a jet lag state because it’s a bit confused. Keep a consistent schedule for better sleep. 2. Waking up later might mean you wake up at a different sleep stage. You might be waking up in a deep sleep state instead of the usual rem or light sleep stage you normally are used to. Your body cycles through these stages every hour and a half on average. 3. If you’re sleeping for too long it might be a health issue like sleep apnea preventing you from getting a good night sleep. Your body isn’t getting the rest it needs.
The most likely answer is that even though you slept longer you woke up in the middle of a sleep cycle.
Your body produces two chemicals related to sleep. The first is what puts you to sleep and your body gradually releases more and more of the chemical allowing you to eventually reach REM sleep. The second chemical is what wakes you up and that chemical is released slowly and if your body needs more sleep your body will release more of the first chemical so you fall back into a deep sleep. If your body thinks you had enough sleep more of the second chemical is released until you wake up naturally.
When you are sleep you will have periods where you are neither asleep or awake and in that state your body will register some stimuli (light level, a sound, temperature change, air pressure change, being touched etc)that your body will think it needs to wake up for because your body thinks it’s in danger. Now if you’re really in danger adrenaline will counter act the sleep chemical you’ll be awake but if when you regain consciousness you realize you’re not in danger you won’t have enough adrenaline or wake up chemical to counter act the fall asleep chemical so you will still feel tired.
Note: sorry I forget the exact names of the two sleep chemicals your body produces
I think the right answer has already been given, I’m just trying to put my impression into new words. It’s not up to you “when to sleep”. There are things going on in your body which govern when you’d sleep (“circadian clocks”?). This shows in several ways. For example, often people try to find sleep, but can’t. Apparently, one of these processes has a period shorter than a full day, maybe more like 6 hours. Usually, you’d take the late part of one such period to fall asleep, and sleep through so that you’d wake up in the late part of the second period. When you oversleep, the next period has already started, you’d maybe sleep way longer and even wake up sleepy.
Basically, it’s because we’re not used to sleep when we’re tired, but when the clock says we shold be sleeping. I guess in the past, when our ancestors were still roaming savannas, when to sleep was more up to the individuals. When somebody wanted to go hunting and everybody else was asleep, they’d be on their own or stay at the camp. Additionally, having rather short and changing sleep cycles probably turned out to be an advantage. As in the teenagers being awake even late at night, and annoying the hell out of everyone and everything that was trying to disturb the sleepers.
Just to elaborate on this, as people have already answered. If you wake up in the middle of a dream your head will be messed and you feel tired still. If you are awoken in the middle of a deep sleep phase you will feel very drowsy. As we alternate between sleep states, being waked up in the REM phase will do that to us, we are supposed to wake up as we leave the REM, and instead of going into deep sleep we wake up.
That’s why if you want to get very little sleep, deciding to sleep for 3 hours, you wake up and feel a mess, while sleeping 4 hours, will have you wake up and feel you got some rest and made you able to work again.
And if you usually wake up after 6 or 8 hours your body has ajdusted itself to that cycle, then when you sleep 2 hours longer, you wake up in the middle of a sleep phase.
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