Americans will be setting their clocks forward early Sunday morning and Kaye Liles, manager of the Sleep Disorder Center of SIU School of Medicine and Memorial Medical Center, provides the answers on how best to deal with this change in your sleep pattern.
How does losing an hour of sleep on Sunday affect people?
Well, actually it is kind of like changing time zones and now we have to reset our internal clock and try to adjust our sleep and wake time.
What are the best ways to deal with the time change during the first week?
Avoid caffeine in such drinks as coffee, tea or sodas prior to sleeping. Try to eliminate activities that would make sleep more difficult, such as exercise right before bedtime. Relax an hour before sleeping, maybe take a warm bath or read a book, activities that help you wind down and become more in sync with the time change. Also, making sure that the bedroom is conducive to sleep by making it dark and cool helps.
The morning will still be more difficult since it will be darker longer. Make sure to turn on the lights to help stimulate your ability to wake up.
How long does it take to adjust?
Research on jet lag from changing time zones shows that it takes about ten days to adjust. For most people the time change will take them a week or two for them to feel like it is normal again and not feel sleep deprived or have difficulty getting going in the morning. Daylight Saving Time is tough to adjust to with that loss of an hour of sleep and it just takes time.
Is lack of sleep a problem in America?
Absolutely, the number one problem that Americans have is shorting ourselves on sleep. It is recommended that a person sleep 7-9 hours and most people get less than 7 hours of sleep and about 15 percent of us get less than 6. We need sleep in order to maintain health, feel better the next day and be alert and awake to be able to perform a job or learn at school. Performance suffers if we are sleep deprived and we are pretty much chronically sleep deprived in this country.
What are the dangers of lack of sleep?
There are 100,000 sleep related automobile accidents a year. People can lose jobs from falling a sleep on the job or lack of concentration for kids in school can hurt their grades.
How are kids impacted by the time change?
Kids do need more sleep than adults, for younger children it is not as big an issue, but for teenagers it is. Children can take naps to help them adjust to the time change. Parents should encourage their teenagers to go to bed earlier to adjust to the time change.
Another a good idea for a teenager's need to sleep is to keep things out the bedroom that stimulate them. This includes, such things as their phone for texting, computers with games or a television in the room. This would help to make the bedroom a place to sleep and not be active.
(Note: According to the American Sleep Disorders Association, the average teenager needs around 9.5 hours of sleep per night. Yet studies show that teenagers generally get an average of only 7.4 hours a night.)
Kaye Liles is the manager of the Sleep Disorder Center of SIU School of Medicine and Memorial Medical Center.
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