Daylight Savings: A Good Idea?
How many of you wake up to the sound of (alarm) going off to get your day started? Raise your hands. How many of you would like to wake naturally? I know I would and was prior to this last Daylights savings. And it took me a long point in life to get to a place where I could do this!
According to the Journal of Sleep Medicine a 2009 study said that it can take from one day and up to 3 weeks for some people to get back adjusted to their schedule. “Like anytime you lose sleep, springing forward causes a decrease in performance, concentration, and memory.”
How many people in this room experienced more high stress episodes or emotional breakdowns in their lives over the last two weeks after we “lost” an hour? How many saw an increase in mistakes or accidents? How many experienced a decrease in concentration? I asked these same questions on a poll that I took on my Facebook page the week after Daylights Savings had happened to see how it affected people.
Here are some of the results: “Kids having difficulty and behavior has reflected this at school”, “totally sucky week”, “I have had a harder time waking up and falling asleep making me more tired throughout the day. Also, I am sick today and I haven't been sick in a year or so”, “Caught a rare cold”, “Worst week in months...similar to last year when the change happened. I find I still go to bed and try and wake on the old schedule, and take it extra easy, because I am all out of sorts. Normally, I know what time it is, in my gut, all day. When the change happens, I just feel CRAPPY.”, “I missed an appointment, for a MASSAGE. I never miss any, especially not that!”, “Friends have had sudden onset of anxiety attacks”, “I was late because I couldn’t get up in the morning! Have been very sleepy, groggy/foggy and not productive at all...I'm noticing how hungry I seem, too! This whole week has been a hurdle. I made a huge purchasing mistake on my credit card, too! I thought I was paying $89 for software when it was, in fact, $869!!! “, A woman who teaches special ed preschool, put it bluntly, “I have not had a stellar week.”
It’s important to know that when we change the time and have to get up either an hour earlier or an hour later, we are changing the circadian rhythm of the body. To put it another way, our bodies have an internal clock that tell us when to sleep and to do all these physiological processes, most of which we don’t have to think about. Disrupting the body’s sleep cycle is not a part of the natural biological rhythms of the body! You may have heard about when someone tried to explain Daylights Savings to an old Indian chief he said, “Only the white man’s government would be so stupid as to cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it onto the bottom, and think they have a longer blanket.” This makes me laugh every time I hear it!
I will also say that in my FB study, some people said they did okay with the transition. One woman said black tea helped. And I will say that many people who do better ingested higher amounts of caffeine, or regularly use it, or they were already up when it’s dark and so didn’t notice as much of a difference.
In a published in the journal ‘Current Biology’. The researchers suggested that humans never really adjust to DST, and that “the biological clock is in tune to natural changes in light throughout the seasons, and doesn't respond well to artificial or social changes in the time.”
My body definitely wants to wait to get up with the sun. And personally, the saddest part about losing the hour is not getting to slowly gain that hour over the course of days, weeks and months, experiencing that light getting longer and longer.
Each person’s ability to adapt to the time change is different and varies depending on how much sleep you are currently getting, the amount of caffeine and alcohol you consume, as well as how much exercise you are getting. Other things that interfere with the body’s natural circadian rhythm is how much light you are exposed to during the day, how much artificial light exposure before bed, what medications you are on, and what you eat.
How does Daylights Saving impact the body? The journal ‘Open Heart’ did a study in 2014 looking at the number of heart attacks on the Monday following daylight saving time, and heart attacks increased 24 percent. This was compared with the daily average for the weeks surrounding the start of daylight saving time. Researchers also found when people gained an hour of sleep at the end of daylight saving in the autumn, heart attack numbers fell by 21 percent. There were more than 42,000 heart attacks during this study period, looking at a good balance of days at the start or stop of daylight saving time with other days during the study period.
Another study done by the American Academy of Neurology, compared the rate of stroke in more than 3,000 people hospitalized the week after a daylight saving time shift, to the rate of stroke in more than 11,000 people hospitalized two weeks before or after the week of transition. The researchers released this study based in Finland on February 29 2016, showing that after daylight savings, stroke was 8% higher. Cancer patients were 25% more likely to have a stroke during that time, and people older than 65 were 20% more likely to have a stroke. We have to be thinking about our stress levels this time of year and risk factors! If you aren’t exercising, are smoking and eating poorly, please pay attention to any chest pains that may occur.
As a Chinese Medical Practitioner, I am always seeing clients for sleep related issues. In fact, it is one of the most common complaints that I see in my office. People typically don’t come in to get help for this, they come in with back pain, with headaches, menstrual issues, with high blood pressure, and then after they tell me about their fatigue, stress, pain and their emotional highs and lows they add in, “Oh ya, and I haven’t been sleeping well.” I
find it odd that so many people don’t think about their sleep enough to come in and say first thing, “I am not sleeping well”. Christopher Barnes an associate professor of management at the University of Washington who researches the impact of sleep deprivation, especially in the workplace says, “As a society, we tend to treat sleep like a luxury or a necessary evil rather than a health issue. We work and live in a culture that tries to cram in so much activity. Because of this, everything else suffers. I always tell my students that sleep makes everything better: your work, your life, your health and your relationships." I couldn’t give more sage advice.
To health!!
~Tanya