Sleep expert explains ‘precision waking’ phenomenon where people can wake up at certain time with no alarm

When it comes to sleep the human experience is a mixed bag.

There are some people who can pretty much be safely ensconced in the land of nod the millisecond their head hits the pillow, whereas others must get through what seems like an age of tossing and turning before they can finally doze off.

Then you've got some pronounced differences in how much some people sleep and when they get up.

A certain select few need not very much sleep at all to function, while the rest of us are much better off making sure we get a good eight hours of rest since sleep is one of the best and healthiest things you can do.

Sadly, every slumber must end and many of us wake up to the oppressive aural assault that is the alarm, that blaring siren that drags you out of dreamland and back to the reality that you've got to get ready for work.

Some of us can wake up just before our alarm, and some of us can't (Getty Stock Image)

However, some lucky folks seem to have an uncanny ability to wake up at the right time without any need for an alarm and this is what's known as 'precision waking'.

What is 'precision waking'?

Do you know someone who can sleep on the train, then suddenly wake up when it's their stop and march out to continue their commute? They're probably adept at 'precision waking'.

Speaking to NPR, sleep expert Dr Robert Stickgold said this one was for all the people who 'wake up a minute before my alarm clock goes off', and even if they shift to an earlier alarm they still beat it.

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However, he also said that despite it happening to so many people, sleep researchers called it 'balderdash' and 'impossible', but also 'a true scientific mystery'.

While the body appears able to stick to a fairly routine sleep schedule, the ability for some to wake up whenever they need to seems hard to explain.

A study found that people who knew when they were meant to get up naturally started the process in time (Getty Stock Image)

Jan Born, professor of behavioural neuroscience at the University of Tübingen, Germany, researched this phenomenon to see whether it could be demonstrated even if it couldn't be fully explained.

In the study, they got 15 people who would usually wake up between 7am and 7:30am, then had them in a sleep lab in groups that were told they'd be getting up at 6am and 9am respectively, with the second group being woken up at 6am even though they hadn't prepared for it.

What the researchers found was a rise in hormones that prepare the body for waking up being released at around 5am for the first group, as though they knew that they were getting up in an hour and the process was due to begin.

These were people getting up at a time that their normal body clock wasn't ready for, but since they'd been told 6am their body was getting ready for that.

The professor said: "It is well known that there is a kind of mechanism in the brain that you can use by volition to influence your body, your brain while it is sleeping."

Isn't it amazing what the human body can do?