Spring Forward WARNING
Five ways daylight saving time can hurt your health
When clocks change on March 14, you’ll reset your microwave ahead an hour and maybe change the smoke-alarm batteries. You also should watch out for some surprising health and safety risks that the switch to daylight saving time (DST) brings.
“An hour of lost sleep seems like not much. But we now know every cell in your body has a clock—and changes in daily patterns can trigger negative effects,” says neurobiologist Joseph Takahashi of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, whose lab discovered the Clock gene, which helps run the circadian rhythms inside us. Twice a year, our internal timers get yanked out of sync. Spring is hardest on us, he says, partly because most people find it harder to get up earlier than to stay up later. That first night, the average adult loses 40 minutes of actual sleep. But it’s harder to fall asleep and stay asleep for a week or more after the changeover. Here are some other possible side effects.
ERRATIC DRIVING
There are more car accidents on the Monday after DST begins, likely due to fuzzier thinking, slower reaction times and darker a.m. drives.
CARDIOVASCULAR EVENTS
Be extra mindful of dizziness, chest or shoulder pain and shortness of breath, as heart attacks spike almost 25 percent on the Monday following spring’s time shift. (In fall, the rate drops 21 percent, a 2014 study found.) Strokes and hospitalizations for atrial fibrillation go up after the March change too.
FEELING JET-LAGGED
Stressed body clocks can affect alertness and learning. In fact, some people feel a disconnect between their body’s time and clock time for eight months until we “fall back” in November because their bodies never really adjust to the change. Tempers also can flare for days to even weeks, especially in teens who find it hard to wake early, kids with autism and people with dementia. They have more sensitive body clocks, possibly making them feel the effects of time disruption longer.
OVERSPENDING . . . AND EATING
Watch your shopping cart: We buy a wider variety of things when we’re sleepdeprived, a Canadian study found. Our brains seek out novelty as part of the bid to stay alert. And sleeping less makes us want to munch more, especially high-calorie foods. Without good sleep, we have more of the hormone ghrelin (which makes us hungry) and less leptin (which makes us feel full).