Can A Pill Help You Wake Up?

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WLTX) ---- It's happened to all us. The morning alarm goes off and you just don't want to get up. Or you sleep through the alarm and you're late for work. Well now there's an over-the-counter product that claims it can help. It's called the "Wake Up On Time Pill." But does it really work and is it safe? News19 is on your side tonight with the answers.

It's a relationship that needed to end.

"I'm a little too fond of the snooze button," Risa Nagasaki says. "I was spending so much time hitting the snooze button, I wasn't getting anything done. I would just sleep until I had to wake up to go to work at noon or one in the afternoon and I realize that I'm losing a lot of time in my day."

Risa's excessive sleeping habits and a sometimes 12-hour evening shift work day, left her in a constant time crunch.

"Even if I did set the alarm because I wanted to get up and do stuff that day, I'd be like, ehhh, hit the snooze button, ehhhh, hit the snooze, before you know it an hour, an hour and a half has gone by and whatever it was that I had planned on doing is gone," she says.

Then Risa found a pill that claimed it could break her dependence to "snoozing".

"I didn't believe it, I thought oh it was one of those hokey things you see on tv," Risa says.

It's called "Wake Up On Time" and it's a dietary supplement taken before you go to bed. The pill is supposed to wake you up seven to eight hours later. Risa says, it worked the first time she used it, just as the website claims.

"I woke up, didn't feel like hitting the snooze button, you know, got up, felt like doing stuff, got in the shower, did some errands, got to work and felt fine," Risa explains.

Sleep specialist Dr. Cam McLain says this pill's main ingredient is caffeine and probably would give you a jolt of energy.

"You wake up like already having had a cup of coffee is the way a lot of people say they feel, and I would imagine that's true because that's the way caffeine makes you feel," he says.

Dr. McLain says having that amount of caffeine in your system before bed could present problems.

"What is it doing to your sleep, to your sleep stages? Is it allowing you to get the normal 4 to 6 cycles of sleep per night to go through all the different stages of sleep in the normal fashion? And the answer to that is, probably not if it's helping wake you up," McLain explains.

"Taking something like a stimulant like caffeine decreases the amount of your deep sleep it also decreases and delays the amount of your REM sleep," he says.


He also says getting a quick fix could be masking more serious medical problems.

"It would tend to make you say, well if it makes me feel more alert then I don't care why I don't feel that way, I'm just going to take this product, when actually you could have something else that's causing you to feel sleepy and having trouble getting going," McLain says.

Dr. McLain doesn't see a problem with using this pill every once in a while. He does say, stop bargaining with your body.

"They try to do these things as part of their negotiation with sleep and the problem is sleep is non-negotiable, there is no substitute for a good night sleep and for sleep, period," he says.

Risa says she hasn't seen any negative side effects.

"I don't have to set the alarm, I wake up and I feel like doing stuff, I don't feel jittery, I don't feel agitated," she says.

Now, she uses "Wake Up On Time" about three times a week.
She's broken it off with her snooze button and says this pill is what made it possible.

"It just makes getting up easier in he morning, which makes my life better," she says.

Each wake up pill has 150-milligrams of caffeine in it and the recommended dose is two pills. Dr. McLain says a strong cup of coffee packs up to 100 milligrams of caffeine. "Wake Up On Time" pills are on a time release schedule. The caffeine is released into your body about 7 hours after you take it.

For more information about these pills, visit their website: www.wakeupontime.com.