You wake up, for no apparent reason, at 5:03 a.m.—and your alarm is set for 6.
Do you take advantage of an early start on the day or try to catch some more sleep?
The best answer depends on a few factors, experts tell Fortune, but generally leans toward heading back to bed. That’s because sleep has restorative properties and impacts multiple body systems.
The first question to ask yourself: whether or not you’ve gotten the recommended seven to nine hours of shut-eye. That’s according to Joachim Behar, a sleep researcher and the head of the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Laboratory at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel.
Most experts recommend 7-9 hours of sleep for adults. If you haven’t deposited enough time in your sleep bank for the night, Behar suggests heading back to bed—with one exception. If your alarm is set to wake you in 90 minutes or less, stay up, he advises. A complete sleep cycle takes around 90 minutes, and interrupting one can lead to sleep inertia.
That’s “the grogginess and difficulty concentrating that many people feel after waking up,” Dr. Raj Dasgupta, chief medical advisor of Sleepopolis, tells Fortune.
Keep reading at fortune.com.
