How Does Daylight Saving Time Affect Sleep Health?

Spring is officially here, and with it, daylight saving time (DST). The official position of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine is to eliminate DST and replace it with a permanent standardized time to support sleep health, and in this video, sleep expert Dr. Anne Marie Morse elucidates how DST affects our sleep cycles and why our bodies may feel different while adjusting to this change.

Dr. Anne Marie Morse:

Spring has sprung, but what did it bring with it? It brought daylight saving time, and though the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and many sleep clinicians and researchers strongly advocate for permanent standard time, we still see this flipping and flopping. And although there is a misperception that by maintaining even a permanent daylight saving that we’d have longer days, that very much is incorrect. However, I’m not going to dig into that. What I’m going to dig into is the fact that many of us may be struggling after daylight saving time. And so, although we’re getting exposed to more daylight during the day, what we’re seeing is that because of fact that we were springing forward and lost that hour, our bodies may still be recuperating from that.

And so, it’s important to first recognize that you may be feeling different. Very frequently, people will kind of disregard the fact that they actually are slower to the gun and being able to execute on all the things they normally do at work. Or maybe they’re more irritable at home or reactive. And so first and foremost, being able to make those associations is incredibly powerful. The reason why is it helps you to recognize the differences—sleep quality, duration, regularity, timing—have on your overall health and performance. And so now that it’s daylight saving time, one of the things that I would say to you is that it’s really important to lean in and be purposeful on how it is that you are going to regulate your day and your nights. Very frequently, we tend to have this hyperfixation on just around how we’re spending our evenings.

However, this also introduces, what are we doing from the time we wake up? If you wake up and you’re tempted to hit that snooze button, really think about: is it possible for you to just get your feet on the ground? Instead of keeping snoozing and trying to steal those extra few minutes, potentially getting yourself out of bed, exposing yourself to the daytime light may be able to help you kickstart your day in the right direction.

Sometimes this also is the introduction of introducing new activities that you maybe weren’t using in the past, whether it’s I’m going to walk up and down my steps for 5 minutes in the morning to start getting my heart rate going and moving a little bit better, to help enhancing some of my natural neurochemistry—my serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine—to help in promoting wakefulness, as well as feeling better about that I’m actually out of bed and I didn’t snooze for those extra 5 to 15 minutes.

As the day progresses, it’s important to see how you’re utilizing your time and also whether or not you’re getting yourself prepared to be able to go to sleep without there being these other distractions that sometimes creep into our ability to fall asleep and stay asleep as we should. These are very important tactics that you can utilize to help in better aligning your new sleep and wake times due to daylight saving. Another important key factor that may provide some benefits is how you’re eating during the day and making sure that you now aren’t keeping those same later dinner times as those may also negatively influence your ability to fall and stay asleep. Although many times, it’s best to try and prepare prior to the time switch, if you hadn’t been prepared, these are just some of the key tips and tricks that you can do to be able to identify how you’re able to get back to the best version of who you are.