Twice a year, we in the West like to play a little gag on ourselves with something called Daylight Saving Time (DST), which is a seasonal adjustment to Standard Time: We fall back an hour in the fall, and we spring forward an hour in the spring. (Get it?) <\/p>\n
Standard Time was invented in the 1840s to help trains maintain schedules in connection with the sun as they passed across vast regions. As seasons change, so too does the amount of daylight in 24 hours. In 1918, policymakers decided to account for that with a time change to help save coal for World War I.<\/p>\n
An outdated policy that disrupts sleep<\/p>\n
DST is widely unpopular\u201460 percent of the population opposes it. Senators passed a bill to jettison DST in 2022, but the House has slept on it. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine has issued recommendations to end DST, citing that it coincides with rises in workplace accidents, car accidents, heart attacks, psychological stress<\/a>, and sleep disorders. This is especially true when we spring forward, losing an hour. <\/p>\n There is evidence that car accidents, which typically happen in the evening when drivers are fatigued, occur less in the summer months because there\u2019s more sunlight, thanks to DST. But that\u2019s only in countries with well-designed roads, which America lacks, and that doesn\u2019t change the fact that people\u2019s mental and physical well-being takes a hit twice a year for an antiquated reason. This is especially true for adolescents and young adults. <\/p>\n Why young adults lose the most sleep<\/p>\n Younger generations take the brunt of seasonal time changes because of how and when they sleep. <\/p>\n Everyone\u2019s sleep architecture runs in two states: non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM<\/a>). NREM contains four distinct stages that gradually deepen until REM, which accounts for 20-25 percent of the cycle and is where our deepest rest and recovery occur. The cycle repeats in 90-minute intervals three to four times per night, with REM\u2019s longest runs happening closer to when we wake up.<\/p>\n How much sleep we need and when we need it changes by age. Adults may need between seven and nine hours, hitting the hay earlier and waking up earlier. But adolescents need 10-11 hours, and their circadian rhythm dictates a later bedtime and much later wake time. Thus, it\u2019s conceivable that those younger folks are losing a critical hour when we spring forward.<\/p>\n Conventional wisdom<\/a> suggests that the quality of our sleep diminishes as we age. True, the REM phase does collapse as we age, but the elderly also nap more and don\u2019t have the need to be rested because they\u2019re retired, hence why the elderly complain less of fatigue and disrupted sleep. <\/p>\n Sleep plagues young adults and late adolescents more, particularly if we consider comorbidities, whether those are medical or psychological. Medications, like stimulants and SSRIs<\/a>, contribute to disrupted sleep. DST contributes to folks missing medications because of the delay. Consider that mental illnesses among the young are on the rise. Also, consider the sleep habits of college-aged kids\u2014drinking, late nights, unstructured schedules. These behaviors die hard in those post-grad, early adult years.<\/p>\n Nowadays, there\u2019s the delayed transition to adulthood\u2014observed as a trend of young adults (particularly men) who carry adolescent traits into their 20s. In my experience as a sleep specialist, women of all ages typically come to therapy<\/a> to work on insomnia<\/a>; I learn of men\u2019s sleep issues when assessing for anxiety<\/a> and depression<\/a> or feeling lost. This is especially true for young men. Much of this could be biological; they are still shaking off the adolescent aspects of their circadian rhythm. But it could also be behavioral. They haven\u2019t adopted new ways of living. They may be drinking less or only on the weekends, but they aren\u2019t exercising or eating healthily, and they\u2019re definitely transfixed on screens longer, playing video games, and scrolling YouTube into the wee hours.<\/p>\n What helps when the clock changes<\/p>\n Biologically, we don\u2019t need to rejigger our clocks to account for seasonal changes because they happen gradually, allowing our circadian rhythms<\/a> to adjust naturally. To minimize the abrupt impacts of DST, try to go to bed earlier in the winter and later in the spring in the days leading up to the switch. Then, consider exercising in the a.m. and getting as much morning light as possible. <\/p>\n True, improving sleep does require good sleep hygiene\u2014decreased screen time<\/a> in the evenings, daytime exercise, a Mediterranean diet<\/a>, and an environment that\u2019s cool, dark, and quiet. However, the impacts of public policy cannot be understated: Culture does impact our sleep. We want 24-hour service\u2014and in the case of emergency services, we need it. But that comes at a cost to shift workers, their families, and their social lives. DST may have roots in energy conservation, but it impedes the energy of the youngest and most vulnerable parts of our population. We can demand that Congress snooze less. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twice a year, we in the West like to play a little gag on ourselves with something called…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-458158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}