Daylight Savings Time Effecting Our Sleep Patterns and Health

Setting our clocks an hour forward can actually have a negative effect on your health! Actually this happens each spring when we set our clocks forward one hour, our bodies actually need to adjust to this time change. Many people are accustomed to the short days and early mornings, but what happens when this is turned around? You lose sleep, and have a more difficult time functioning in the morning. All this can lead to decreased productivity at work, and irritability in the home

The average person will have two or three difficult nights of sleep once this time change occurs and there is a good explanation for this. Your brain what's known as a circadian pace maker, it allows your brain to determine when to rest and when to wake up. The time change throws this pace maker into disarray, causing stress while sleeping. This stress causes the brain to rest lightly, and you never reach a deep REM sleep. REM sleep is the most productive sleep, in terms of rest, and without it you will wake up tired and un-rested.

The longer days mean that the nights are going to be lighter. When many people go to sleep their brains interpret this as "being lazy" and attempting to sleep while there is still daylight outside. Because of this the brain will fight to keep itself awake, resulting in a horrible nights sleep. When morning rolls around and you wake up it's still going to be dark outside, again tricking your brain. Because it is still dark your brain thinks that it's still to early to be up and will fight to stay asleep. Again this causes distress with the rest of the body and will result in a very difficult morning.

The brain will automatically produce a chemical known as melatonin when it is time for rest. Melatonin is the chemical that puts our body at rest and is produced at night when the brain is ready for sleep. However when this cycle is interrupted we become out of sorts. In the evening when we try and go to sleep, our brain refuses to produce the chemical, and in the morning when it's time to wake up, it keeps producing the chemical. A vicious cycle, but one that we have had to deal with for centuries.

A few helpful tips to help get through this and help your brain retrain itself to become accustom the new time. Within just a few days your brain will be able to reset itself and your body will be back to normal. To help speed up this process there are a couple of things you can do. For one thing you can take melatonin pills to help you fall asleep at night. These work great to allow you an easy and restful night sleep. Also in the morning when you first wake up, make the room you are in as bright as possible. Turn on a lot of lights, this will help stimulate the brains and help to maintain proper morning function.

People who are affected most by this change are those who travel a lot and those who work shift jobs. The change and the stress put on the body will be more prominent and enhanced by their already irregular schedule, but the above tips will also help them. The long term health effects are non-existent; this is just a natural course of events that human kind has put up with since the dawn of daylight savings time, so there is no cause for alarm or worry. However the fact that there is no health risk does not make it any easier to deal with this change, all we can do is try and understand how it affects our bodies. Then we can try our best to deal with it.