Surviving time change: Kaiser Permanente MD on daylight saving

Kaiser Permanente San Jose Physician Saroja Sripathi, MD, vividly remembers her first run-in with issues related to daylight saving time when she was a resident physician in Chicago.

“I’d always get to the hospital early, care for my patients, and then report to my attending,” she said.

But one year, the “spring forward” to daylight saving time meant she woke up an hour late. By the time she got to the hospital, her attending physician had done all her work.

“I was so embarrassed, and my attending wasn’t happy with me,” said Sripathi, who is now Kaiser Permanente Northern California’s Regional Leader for Sleep Medicine. “It was a lesson that losing an hour of sleep can mean missing appointments or being late for school.”

Why does losing this one hour of sleep affect us? It’s because our bodies run on an internal clock, called Circadian Rhythm. When our internal clock doesn’t sync with the external clock, like when we switch to daylight saving time on Sunday and lose an hour, it causes poor sleep and sleep loss. With the time change, there are immediate consequences, like weariness and grumpiness, that sometimes may take weeks or even months to adjust too.

Daylight saving time can also have more serious consequences for some.

“There are studies showing a small increase in heart-attack risk when we move our clocks ahead an hour. Fatal car crashes also increase after the springtime shift to daylight saving time,” Sripathi said.

Teenagers are likely to be more affected by the time change. Teens are usually up late at night and using electronic devices at bedtime. Some already don’t get enough sleep to begin with, so the loss of an hour can be significant for them, Sripathi said.

To minimize the effects of the time change, a few behavior changes can help:

• Go to bed 15 minutes early, starting several days before the change, and increase by 15 minutes every couple of nights. Make an extra effort to be well-rested the week before the time change.
• If you feel sleepy the Sunday after the change to daylight saving time, try and get good exposure to sunlight Sunday morning
• Avoid coffee and alcohol, especially late in the evening. Alcohol prevents you from getting quality sleep.
• Avoid sleeping in an hour longer in the morning, or on the weekends.

“Sleep is essential for good health,” Sripathi said. “With many people already sleep-deprived in this country, losing an hour can be significant unless you take steps to minimize the impact.”