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Quick overview of what we’ll cover in this blog post:
- The consequences of Daylight Savings
- How it affects our short-term health
- How it affects our longevity
- What we can do to avoid the risks
Twice a year, we dutifully reset our clocks, springing forward or backward as part of the age-old tradition of Daylight Saving Time (DST). But this time of year also affects more than just our schedule, going beyond the minor annoyance of losing or gaining an hour.
From increased heart attacks to long-term impacts on aging and brain health, DST can also affect our body’s natural sleep cycle, which can have a bigger impact on our healthy longevity than we might realize. Though experts in both the scientific and political world debate over its continued necessity, it’s clear that our sleep, energy, and healthspan may be paying the price.
So, how exactly does shifting the clock impact our health, and what can we do to protect ourselves?
What’s Daylight Saving?
It’s the time of year we all dread, the time when we change our clocks to match the changing sunset—Daylight Saving Time (DST). It starts around spring when we first roll our clocks forward, and ends in the winter when we roll our clocks back, and though not quite as festive as Easter or Halloween, DST still comes with its own set of traditions—losing sleep, or otherwise altering our healthy sleeping patterns.
The modern justification for DST is that rising in line with daylight hours gives us more energy and healthier sleep. Funny enough, though, the idea of DST was initially a joke, when Benjamin Franklin authored a satirical letter to a Parisian journal proposing that waking up earlier would help people save money on candles. Smart!
Whether we’re falling back or springing forward, many agree that DST hinders our energy as our bodies readjust.
How Changing Our Clocks Is Hurting Us
But just how long does that readjustment phase take? It’s hard to say for our energy, but many other consequences arise when we change the clocks.
When we roll our clocks forward, hospitals report close to a 25% increase in heart attacks alone. Conversely, on the day after we roll our clocks back, heart attacks drop by up to 21%. Though these figures also stabilize within a few days of the time change, they still don’t illustrate the compounding harm of regularly interrupting our sleep patterns.
The Long-Term Consequences
Losing an hour of sleep is always a pain, and something we can notice immediately. But gaining an hour of sleep can also have similar consequences.
The problem lies in changing our sleep patterns—no matter which way you roll the clocks, it can still have long-term effects on how we age. After all, sleep is the ultimate health insurance. This may help explain the spike in heart attacks after DST, but when we dive into what happens as we sleep, it’s easier to see the full consequences of DST.
During sleep, our brain washes accumulated trash (or amyloid beta) from its nooks and crannies. Meanwhile, our endocrine system resets, our immune system recalibrates, and our gut refortifies its barriers.
Our circadian rhythm coordinates all these processes, like a symphony between our bodies and the day cycle, with the sun as the conductor and our physiology as the orchestra.
So think of DST as a heckler in the orchestra chambers throwing the conductor off rhythm.
Even when one member of the symphony is playing off rhythm, the whole orchestra is off. Similarly, when our sleep is interrupted by even an hour, these processes can be thrown into complete disharmony. One off-note can be minimalized; multiple can ruin a symphony’s future.
Why Do We Still Follow DST?
Throwing off your sleep can certainly be irritating in the short term, but it also throws our bodies off rhythm in the long term, keeping it from performing necessary maintenance that prevents heart disease, stroke, and even dementia. Over time, just one hour of lost sleep may be the breaking point.
In fact, it’s fair to ask why DST is even a thing nowadays. Fortunately, DST may soon be a relic of the past.
In 2022, the United States Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would establish a permanent Daylight Savings Time. In other words, when passed, the next time we roll our clocks forward would be the last. But the bill has yet to be approved by the House of Representatives, where it’s died several times since passing the Senate. It can always be revived, though we have no indication of when or if that may happen.
What We Can Do About It
While we wait for the government to end this tradition, there are ways to combat DST in the meantime.
Balancing our light exposure is critical to restoring our circadian rhythm. When the days start to get shorter, and the nights longer, it’s imperative that you get as much Vitamin D as you can, especially in the mornings. Try to take a 15-30 minute stroll in the sun within the first hour of waking up, and dim the lights as much as possible during the evening. If you still have trouble falling asleep, try lowering the temperature in your home at night: lower temperatures can signal to our brains that it’s time for sleep.
Additionally, both B12 and NAD+ supplementation can restore healthy sleep. Both molecules affect our natural sleep patterns, and both decrease in levels with age. NAD+ is particularly important, acting as the master regulator of our circadian rhythm, so maintaining healthy NAD+ levels is an absolute must when our body is facing seasonal changes.
But perhaps most important of all is to stick to your sleep routine! When you finally do settle back into a steady sleep pattern, it’s best to maintain this pattern even through time changes. So if you were going to bed at 11:30pm, start going to bed at 10:30pm following the time change (or vice versa).
As DST nears, just remember to set your time to your body clock, rather than our collective social clock.
Learn more about how sleep and energy affects your longevity.
Note: The above statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.