The annual ritual in which we “gain” an hour of sleep each November by pushing the clocks backward may seem like a harmless shift.
But each March, on Monday after the springtime lurch forward, hospitals report a 24% spike in heart attack visits around the US.
Just a coincidence? Probably not. Doctors see an opposite trend in the fall: The day after we turn back the clocks, heart attack visits drop 21% as many people enjoy a little extra pillow time.
“That’s how fragile and susceptible your body is to even just one hour of lost sleep,” sleep expert Matthew Walker, author of “How We Sleep,” previously told Business Insider.
For those of us who will be asleep in bed, researchers estimate that each spring we deprive ourselves of an extra 40 minutes of sleep because of the change. Our bodies may not fully recover from the shift for weeks, though the tragic heart attack trend only lasts about a day.
We’re also prone to make more deadly mistakes on the roads: Researchers estimate that car crashes in the US caused by sleepy daylight-saving drivers likely cost 30 extra people their lives over the nine-year period from 2002-2011.
Walker said daylight-saving time, or DST, is a kind of “global experiment” we perform twice a year. And the results show just how sensitive our bodies are to the whims of changing schedules: In the fall the shift is a blessing; in the spring it’s a fatal curse.
In addition to the heart-attack trend, which lasts about a day, researchers estimate that car crashes caused by drivers who were sleepy after clocks changed likely cost 30 extra people in the US their lives over the nine-year period from 2002 to 2011.
“The brain, by way of attention lapses and micro-sleeps, is just as sensitive as the heart to very small perturbations of sleep,” Walker explains in his book.
The problems don’t stop there. DST also causes more reports of injuries at work, more strokes, and may lead to a temporary increase in suicides. Our bodies may not fully recover from the springtime bump for weeks.
Why do we ‘save’ daylight for the later hours of the day
Daylight-saving time was originally concocted as a way to save energy in the evening and was implemented during World War I in Germany. But more recent research suggests it’s probably not saving us any megawatts of power at all. There is some evidence, however, that extra evening light can reduce crime and increase the time people spend exercising, at least in certain climates.
Worldwide, fewer than half of all countries participate in this biannual clock-changing ritual.
Not everyone in the US follows it either. Hawaii and Arizona ignore DST, since it makes less sense to shift the clocks when you live near the equator, where the sun rises and sets at roughly the same time every day.
Residents and lawmakers in California and Florida are also trying to ditch the switch. Voters in the Golden State opted to get rid of the annual clock change in the 2018 midterm elections, and Florida lawmakers enacted the “Sunshine Protection Act” aimed at doing the same thing last March.
Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, and Idaho have all angled to do the same recently, with the proposed legislation. But the shift to a permanent daylight-saving-time plan isn’t something states can decide for themselves: The measures require a green light from Congress to take effect, something both California and Florida have yet to receive.
If your sleep issues are more than just one day of feeling out-of-body, you may have sleep apnea. Call Alaska Sleep Clinic today for your FREE consultation.
