In November our time falls back by an hour, yet I’m waking up an hour earlier! I teach a meditative drawing class and this week I was there 45 minutes earlier! I try to take a nap in the afternoon and can’t fall asleep! I’m hoping I will adjust soon. By January it seems like the afternoon light lasts longer. Could it have been that I was on overload since mid-September? I was on the run and busier then ever since mid-September. I know I’m not alone. Time for melatonin supplementation perhaps.
How time changes actually affect you depends on your own personal health, sleep habits and lifestyle.
Some reports say that losing an hour in the spring is more difficult to adjust to than gaining an hour in the fall. It is similar to airplane travel, traveling east we lose time. An earlier bedtime may cause difficulty falling asleep and increased wakefullness during the early part of the night. Yet going west, we fall asleep easily but may have a diffult time waking.
One report says that it takes only about a day to adjust for each hour of time change. There is significant individual variation, however.
Symptoms:
Symptoms include: Distrubed sleep, early waking or excessive sleepiness, daytime fatigue, difficulty concentrating or functioning at your usual level, stomach problems, constipation or diarrhea, a general feeling of not being well, mood changes.
If you are getting seven to eight hours of sound sleep and go to bed a little earlier the night before, you may wake up feeling refreshed. If you are sleep-deprived already, getting by on six hours, you are probably in a bit of trouble. In this situation, you may well experience the decrements of performance, concentration, and memory common to sleep-deprived individuals, as well as fatigue and daytime sleepiness.
Light:
Light is the principal environmental cue. Light suppresses the secretion of the sleep-inducing substance melatonin. So it is important to expose yourself to the light during the waking hours as much a possible. For example, if you get up at night to go to the bathroom, do not turn on the light. At night, when the light signal is low, the hypothalamus tells the pineal gland, a small organ situated in the brain, to release melatonin. During daylight hours, the opposite occurs, and the pineal gland produces very little melatonin. Prepare beforehand by installing a night light. You may be able to ease your adjustment to your new time change by exposing yourself to daylight in the new time zone so long as the timing of light is done properly.
Sleep Hygeine:
Sleep hygiene is a term used to describe those actions you can take to create sleep-friendly environments and enhance your changes of falling asleep, staying asleep, and sleeping soundly. Basic sleep hygiene includes reducing or eliminating caffeine and alcohol, exercising several hours before bedtime, creating calming rituals before bed to gradually relax yourself (taking a hot bath for example), and wearing ear plugs and eye masks, to name a few. Also important is going to bed and rising at the same time every day. There is no evidence that certain diets will actually influence your circadian rhythm. If you can drink milk, warm it up. The tryptophan in milk will help make you sleepy.
What is the Purpose of Daylight Savings?
Some theories believe it has to do with the dairy industry. One report I found said that historically, daylight saving time has begun in the summer months and ended for winter. The reason for daylight savings time has long been to save energy. Benjamin Franklin takes the honor (or blame, depending on your view of the time changes) for coming up with the idea to reset clocks in the summer months as a way to conserve energy, according to David Prerau, author of “Sieze the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Savings Time” By moving clocks forward people could take advantage of the extra evening daylight rather than wasting energy on lighting. At the time, Franklin was ambassador to Paris and so wrote a witty letter to the Journal of Paris at 1784, rejoicing over the “discovery” that the sun provides light as soon as it rises. The time change was first instituted in the United States during World War I and then reinstated it again during World War II, as a part of the war effort. During the Arab oil embargo, when Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) stopped selling petroleum in the United States. Congress even enacted a trial period of year-round daylight saving time in an attempt to save energy.
Other problems due to time changes
More car accidents. An increase in car accidents during daylight saving time has been both supported and refuted in the academic literature. The general concept supporting the case, however, is that subtle changes in sleep patterns and circadian rhythms can alter human alertness and, in some cases, might increase the risk of potentially fatal car accidents.
Increased workplace injuries
Though this may not apply to those who work in the relatively padded confines of carpeted office buildings, others who work at more physically taxing jobs, such as miners, have been shown to experience more frequent and severe workplace injuries at the onset of daylight saving time in the spring. The effect has not been detected at the end of daylight saving time in the fall.
More heart attacks
A team of Swedish researchers conducted a study in 2008 that showed the rate of heart attacks during the first three workdays, following springtime daylight saving time increased by about 5 percent from the average rate during other times of the year. As with workplace injuries, the effect did not arise at the end of daylight saving time in the fall.
In the 2008 New England Journal of Medicine article that describes this pattern, the researchers attributed the small surge in heart attacks in the springtime to changes in people’s sleep patterns. Lack of sleep can release stress hormones that increase inflammation, which can cause more severe complications in people already at risk of having a heart attack.
Large cyberloafing
Cyberloafing – the slang word for surfing the Web for personal entertainment during work hours. While not life threatening it does cost companies thousands of dollars in salary wages flushed down the internet tube.
A 2012 Journal of Applied Pyschology study found that the incidence of cyberloafing significantly increased in more than 200 metropolitan U.S. regions during the first Monday after daylight savings time in the spring, compared with the Mondays directly and one week after the transition. The team attributed the shift to a lack of sleep and thus lack of workday motivation and focus but was not able to verify this experimentally.
Increased cluster headaches
Circadian rhythms tick away throughout the body each day, controlling the release of certain hormones that affect moods, hunger levels, and yearning for sleep. When these rhythms get thrown out of whack, even by just one hour during daylight savings time, the human body notices the difference.
For some people, the effects of this change can set off debilitating chronic pain. Cluster headaches, for example, or headches that cluster within one side of a person’s head and can cause excruciating pain for days or weeks at a time, seem to be triggered by changes in circadium rhythms, including during the transitions in and out of daylight saving, the New York Daily News reported.
While some reports say that the reasons why this change affects us, the Sleep Science and Research at Sleep Number says that shifting our sleep patterns on the weekends is such an interruption of our natural cycle, it’s akin to jet lag (traveling across time zones). they both create a misalignment between our internal circadian rhythms, and the newly imposed structure of our days. But unlike flying jet lag, this weekend “social jet lag” is repeated every seven days with little time to recover. And it influences our performance and health every week!
Compared to those who shifted their schedule less, blood work on this group revealed risk factors for type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Such as significantly higher triglycerides, lower HDL-cholesterol levels (the “good” heart-healthy cholesterol), higher adipose fat levels: greater waist circumferences, higher fasting insulin levels and greater insulin resistence.
