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- [Presenter] It happens twice a year,
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where we spring forward or fall back an hour
for daylight savings time.
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Losing an hour of sleep,
is what most people hate about the shift,
but the extra sunlight is often a blessing
for those who hate leaving work in the dark.
Though it was proposed as a way
to conserve energy and daylight,
when we look closer at the effect it has on the body,
the question arises, "Is it worth it?"
We spoke with two sleep researchers
about the effects daylight savings time
has on our bodies and minds.
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- For millennia, as we have evolved, as a species,
we've taken our cues from sunlight.
Circadian rhythm is your internal clock,
which is likely very closely connected
to what we call the photoperiod, or the sun clock.
- Basically almost every organism
that's ever been studied on the planet Earth,
has a circadian rhythm,
and these are near 24-hour clocks.
In people, this is a super critical kind of thing
to help organize kind of daily rhythms,
as well as to anticipate events.
One of the things that the body anticipates,
is waking up in the morning.
And in order to wake up in the morning,
one of the things it does, is that it increases cortisol
in anticipation of waking.
This increase in cortisol allows
for a increased, basically available energy,
which enables you to kind of prep your cardiovascular system
for standing up.
- So instead of waking up at, for example, 7 o'clock,
which is the usual time you'll wake up is 6 o'clock.
So that's what we do when we move
from standard time to daylight savings time,
is move the clock forward.
So you have to wake up early,
in reference to the sun clock.
You basically go out of sync.
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The acute effects of this, social jet lag,
and then there are these chronic effects.
Huge situation, to in effect it happens
for the next few days,
you're more prone to having motor vehicle accidents.
You're more prone to having accidents at work.
There is now several studies demonstrating
that it induces heart attack.
That it induces the abnormal rhythm of the heart,
causes atrial fibrillation,
which predisposes people to stroke.
There is at least one study that demonstrated
that the risk of stroke actually goes up.
There is increased visits to the ER,
there is increased missed medical appointments,
and the list goes on.
Right, I mean, so a lot of bad things happen,
in the first few days after you switch.
- The problem, the big con in this shift
is that you're having everybody does it at the same time.
You know, and when everyone does it on the same day, again,
even if it's a very rare event, you know,
in the U. S. alone,
you have 350 million people doing it on the same day,
it is just easier to see
when you have the very large population doing it.
- And then there are the chronic effects, right.
So, you know, some people say well,
it's fine because in a few days, you adjust,
but we found the next, in recent literature,
that many people don't adjust, it is not completely.
And so social jet lag has been associated with obesity,
has been associated with metabolic syndrome,
which is a fancy doctor way
of saying that you have obesity,
high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease.
- The strictly the biomedical point of view,
I'd say, "Get rid of it."
There's really, you know, there are enough negatives to it,
that you should really not have it.
- Yeah, you could plan, make sure the week before,
before the transition that you get enough sleep.
And then once the transition happens,
especially for those things that require extra
with your lens, that you do be more careful,
like there are with a car, operating machinery.
- And you can kind of prep a little with having,
you know, a little extra light exposure,
you're getting up, you know, earlier than anticipated.
You can, especially if you're older,
you can give yourself a little extra time,
in getting out of bed in the morning.
That kind of helps, will help produce the cardiac burden.
- With the last 10, 15, 20 years,
there's just a bunch of evidence,
that sleep affects a lot of different things,
like you know, heart disease and metabolic syndrome,
and mood disorders, and other things.
And so how you sleep is very, very important.
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