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> You can compare the use of alarm clocks to smoking or eating hot dogs.

Wow. That’s a big statement, surely comparing alarms to smoking is a bit much?

It is a big statement. I've personally not used an alarm clock in about 10 years, I wake up naturally. The times I do use an alarm clock I can genuinely say often make be feel ill for the rest of the day.

Still, not sure it's as bad as smoking.

Given the critical importance of sleep (if you don't have enough, you die or go insane) - the default assumption should really be that anything that interrupts natural sleep/wake cycles is damaging, and we should have to prove otherwise. I mean, why not? You will notice the effects of going without it much sooner than going without food, for example.

Personally, I totally buy that it could be as bad as (or even worse) than smoking. How much bad stuff has happened due to lack of sleep/quality of sleep that we just discount as due to something else entirely?

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