For instance, many children start school around 8 a.m. This shift in melatonin during puberty lasts into our 20s.Īdolescents also may be chronically sleep deprived due to school, sports and social activity schedules. This can interfere with sleep and cause us to sleep less overall, and the effect can last even after most people adjust to losing an hour of sleep at the start of daylight saving time.īecause puberty also causes melatonin to be released later at night, meaning that teenagers have a delay in the natural signal that helps them fall asleep, adolescents are particularly susceptible to sleep problems from the extended evening light of daylight saving time. In contrast, exposure to light later into the evening delays the brain’s release of melatonin, the hormone that promotes drowsiness. This is particularly notable because morning light is valuable for helping to set the body’s natural rhythms: It wakes us up and improves alertness.Īlthough the exact reasons are not yet known, this may be due to light’s effects on increasing levels of cortisol, a hormone that modulates the stress response or the effect of light on the amygdala, a part of the brain involved in emotions. So it’s a permanent shift to later morning light for almost eight months – not just for the day of the change or a few weeks afterward. This is because our clock time is moved an hour later in other words, it feels like 7 a.m. Springing forward is harder on the body, however. While some people may feel thrown off balance and need a few weeks to recover, research hasn’t linked it to serious impacts on health. “Falling back” – going from daylight saving time to standard time each November by turning the clocks back one hour – is relatively benign. ![]() In a 2020 commentary for the journal JAMA Neurology, my co-authors and I reviewed the evidence linking the annual transition to daylight saving time to increased strokes, heart attacks and teen sleep deprivation.īased on an extensive body of research, my colleagues and I believe that the science establishing these links is strong and that the evidence makes a good case for adopting permanent standard time nationwide – as I testified at a recent Congressional hearing. ![]() I’m a professor of neurology and pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, and the director of our sleep division. Researchers are discovering that “springing ahead” each March is connected with serious negative health effects. An overwhelming 63 percent to 16 percent majority would like to eliminate them completely.īut the effects go beyond simple inconvenience. prepare to turn their clocks ahead one hour in mid-March, I find myself bracing for the annual ritual of media stories about the disruptions to daily routines caused by switching from standard time to daylight saving time.Ībout a third of Americans say they don’t look forward to these twice-yearly time changes.
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