Sleeping longer hours and waking later contribute to higher morning alertness, according to research published in Nature Communications by Raphael Vallat of the University of California, Berkeley and his research team. Their general rule is: the better and longer you sleep, the more you are alert.
The second factor is the amount of exercise you get the day before. The more you move during the day and the less you move at night, the better you sleep. The better you sleep, the more alert you are after waking up.
The third factor is breakfast. The more carbohydrates you eat, the more focused you are. On the contrary, a protein-packed breakfast decreases one's level of alertness. The last factor is the level of sugar in your blood. The lower the blood glucose response is, the better you feel after you wake up.
More than 830 people participated in the study. The majority of them were twins, which helped filter out genetic variations. The study continued for two weeks. During this period, volunteers rated their alertness, while other factors were carefully monitored. Scientists admit that their research is not perfect since volunteers simply ranked their level of alertness; it was not measured by any scientific means.
Nevertheless, they believe that their research is important since it can help lots of people to be alert and feel better in the morning, including people with hazardous occupations – and in this case the research may save lives. They stress that they have identified the factors that can be modified.
“Our results reveal a set of key factors associated with alertness that are, for the most part, not fixed. Instead, the majority of factors associated with alertness are modifiable, and therefore permissive to behavioral intervention," Raphael Vallat and colleagues write.