Why does a person wake up with a headache or eyesore if he/she sleeps for too long?
In: Biology
Your inner clock, triggered by light through your eyelids and also simply by time, starts releasing stress hormones and tries to lower melatonin, a hormone that makes you sleepy/ sleep in order to wake you up. When you’re exhausted or drugged, the latter doesn’t work. So you end up with stress hormones flooding your body, designed to make you alert and responsive, whilst still running on too much melatonin to actually wake you up. That causes you to dehydrate and lose lots of important chemicals like electrolytes, pretty much like a hangover.
Tl;dr: Pretty much like a hangover.
We sleep in cycles. It’s said one cycle is around 90 mins (but it really depends on each person), during this cycle there are some hormones released to help you sleep and then by the end of the cycle your body tries to reduce them. So if you wake up after 45 mins (in the middle of the cycle) you might feel even sleepier than before the nap, as there are still those hormones in your body. And after few cycles ( few hours of sleep) those hormones build up in your body as there is always some leftover from the previous cycle, and then there is another cycle so there is more hormones etc etc and that’s how it builds up. so if you wake up after “too many” cycles the build up of those hormones will make you feel bad.
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