I’m never quite prepared for our annual government-sanctioned exercise in sleep deprivation. March reliably delivers Daylight Saving Time, and yet it never fails to catch me unaware and drag me from my comfortable sleep schedule into some yawning chasm of circadian confusion.
Last week’s changing of the clocks proved to be no exception. I retired on Saturday night around 10, as I normally do, and woke as usual around 7 — except it was 8. That meant my normal pre-breakfast routine ended at 10 rather than 9, which meant breakfast became brunch and ended at 11, rather than 10, which meant lunch with our visiting grandson arrived later than necessary, which meant . . . well, you get the idea.
The real circadian chaos hit on Monday, though. I awoke in what seemed to be the middle of the night, which was actually 7 in the morning (or 6 two days earlier), and slogged through the day desperate for a nap. I finally collapsed just before dinner but was unable to snooze. So, I crashed earlier than usual that night and didn’t stir for the next 10 hours.
This is not normal.
And it’s not exactly optimal for me and my contemporaries. “Daylight Saving Time can affect your mood, your overall alertness, your memory, and your ability to overall comprehend appropriately,” Mayo Clinic sleep-medicine physician Rachel Ziegler, MD, tells AARP. “It’s the most difficult to adjust to for those who are already sleep-deprived or those who already have poor sleep habits.”
“Daylight Saving Time can affect your mood, your overall alertness, your memory, and your ability to overall comprehend appropriately. It’s the most difficult to adjust to for those who are already sleep-deprived or those who already have poor sleep habits.”
Volumes of research have documented the surge in car accidents, heart attacks, and strokes that occur in the wake of our abrupt spring transition. Most recently, a 2024 study published in BMJ Medicine linked the time shift with a slight rise in mortality rates among people suffering from dementia, cancer, and respiratory diseases. “The effects of shifts in Daylight Saving Time on general mortality risks were strongly increased by age,” the authors conclude. “Elderly people could be more susceptible to the effects of Daylight Saving Time on adverse health outcomes.”
These sorts of concerns — and the murky rationale for the time shift — have fueled multiple attempts to revisit the 1966 legislation that standardized DST. Farmers, for whose benefit the edict is often cited, have long railed against it, noting that their work schedules are dictated by the sun, not the clock. And the argument that the longer days save energy is not as persuasive as it may have been during the 1973 oil embargo, when DST was implemented year-round.
Still, the most recent efforts, including the stymied Sunshine Protection Act, have focused on making Daylight Saving Time a permanent fixture — despite its many critics. The move to make DST permanent during the 1973 oil embargo was so unpopular that Congress repealed the legislation after only nine months. It also failed to win much support when implemented in the United Kingdom in 1968, Portugal in 1992, and Russia in 2011. In fact, no country currently observes DST on a permanent basis, so there’s little reason to expect such a shift here (though nothing that might emerge from the White House these days would surprise me).
Oddly enough, as Chantelle Lee reports in Time, there’s never been much support for a permanent Standard Time — though Arizona and Hawaii have adopted it — despite routine pleadings from the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM). “From a circadian alignment perspective . . . it’s really the only choice that’s healthy,” AASM spokesperson David Kuhlmann, MD, tells Lee.
That leaves us with the task of somehow learning to better navigate next spring’s circadian challenges. Ziegler and other sleep experts offer a basic prescription: go to bed a little earlier in the days leading up to the Sunday shift, exercise a bit more on that Saturday, wake up Sunday at the same time you’d wake up on Monday, take a brief nap on Sunday, and other helpful remedies.
“As people get older, their circadian rhythms tend to advance — meaning that people go to bed early and wake up early — and springing forward tends to help those people.”
Properly handled, the time shift can actually be a healthy move for seniors like me, notes Cleveland Clinic sleep specialist Michelle Drerup, PsyD. “As people get older, their circadian rhythms tend to advance — meaning that people go to bed early and wake up early — and springing forward tends to help those people.”
Melissa Kirsch doesn’t need any help. Writing in The New York Times on the eve of last week’s time shift, she describes how she embraces the change in ways that may challenge the rest of us. “When the light returns, something unclenches in me,” she notes. “Now we will loosen up. Now we will stop being so withholding and rigid with our time, with our presence, with our imaginations.”
The tensions that exist between the seasons — the contraction of the colder months against the expansiveness of spring and summer — can create a similar internal tension, she argues. And that Sunday shift of the clock is sometimes the nudge we need to loosen up.
“We change the clocks by an hour, making this deliberate shift from dark to light in our external worlds,” she explains. “How can we do this internally as well? How will we meet this unofficial beginning of the lighter, looser half of the year? How will we thaw out, unclench, let go?”
Spring reveals itself reluctantly here in the North Country (our March blizzards are legendary), so it takes some time for us to thaw out, loosen up, and begin to appreciate the longer, warmer days. But I’m an optimistic guy: There’s a decent chance that my circadian rhythms will be completely in sync with the season just about the time we turn the clocks back in November.
This Post Has 0 Comments