Safeguard Your Sleep: Everything You Need to Know About Daylight Saving Time

2024-03-02 15:50:16

If you enjoy sleeping in on the weekends, brace yourself, because we are regarding to ‘spring forward’ very soon.

Daylight saving time is set to begin in the U.S. on March 10, and while there have been attempts in Congress to make the time change permanent, no such measure has been passed, and as a result, we will be losing an hour of sleep in the coming days.

Here’s what to know:

When does daylight saving time begin?

Under federal law, daylight saving time begins on the second Sunday in March, and runs through the first Sunday of November in most of the United States.

This year, that date falls on March 10 with clocks set forward one hour at 2 a.m. that morning.

What is daylight saving time?

Daylight saving time is a changing of the clocks that typically begins in spring and ends in fall in what is often referred to as “spring forward” and “fall back.”

Under the conditions of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, daylight saving time starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November.

On those days, clocks either shift forward or backward one hour.

But it wasn’t always that way.

Clocks used to spring ahead on the first Sunday in April and remained that way until the final Sunday in October, but a change was put in place in part to allow children to trick-or-treat in more daylight.

In the United States, daylight saving time lasts for a total of 34 weeks, running from early-to-mid March to the beginning of November in states that observe it.

Some people like to credit Benjamin Franklin as the inventor of daylight saving time when he wrote in a 1784 essay regarding saving candles and saying, “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” But that was meant more as satire than a serious consideration.

Germany was the first to adopt daylight saving time on May 1, 1916, during World War I as a way to conserve fuel. The rest of Europe followed soon following.

The United States didn’t adopt daylight saving time until March 19, 1918. It was unpopular and abolished following World War I.

On Feb. 9, 1942, Franklin Roosevelt instituted a year-round daylight saving time, which he called “wartime.” This lasted until Sept. 30, 1945.

Daylight saving time didn’t become standard in the U.S. until the passage of the Uniform Time Act of 1966, which mandated standard time across the country within established time zones. It stated that clocks would advance one hour at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in April and turn back one hour at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in October.

States might still exempt themselves from daylight saving time, as long as the entire state did so. In the 1970s, due to the 1973 oil embargo, Congress enacted a trial period of year-round daylight saving time from January 1974 to April 1975 in order to conserve energy.

Which states observe daylight saving time?

Nearly every U.S. state observes daylight saving time, with the exceptions of Arizona (although some Native American tribes do observe DST in their territories) and Hawaii. U.S. territories, including Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, do not observe daylight saving time.

How does daylight saving time affect our health?

Every year, around this time, we “spring ahead” an hour to help us make the best use of daylight during the summer. But while we enjoy soaking up those extra hours of sun, the reality is it can take a few days to get used to time change.

According to a study from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine55% of adults in the United States feel tired during the spring daylight saving time change.

In fact, the study revealed it can take five to seven days to adjust to daylight saving time.

“This is because we lose an hour of sleep. Many of us, due to work-life demands, are already sleep deprived. Daylight saving time, which disrupts our internal clock temporarily, is an added stressor,” Dr. Carol Ash, a sleep specialist with RWJBarnabas Health, told TODAY.

What can I do to prepare my body for daylight saving time?

Daylight saving time does not necessarily have to completely alter your sleep routine. Luckily, you can face the time change head-on by following these expert-approved tips that work equally well for kids and adults alike.

Reconsider your bedtime
“Try going to bed 15 minutes earlier, starting two to three days before the time change. This will help make sure you are well-rested before the clock change so any resulting ‘sleep debt’ will feel less extreme,” Candice A. Alfano, Ph.D., director of the University of Houston’s Sleep and Anxiety Center of Houston, told TODAY.

Shift your wakeup call
“A few days before daylight saving time, set your wakeup time to 30 minutes ahead. This will narrow the difference and make it easier for you to adjust to the time change,” Dr. Ana Krieger, medical director of the Center for Sleep Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and New York-Presbyterian, said.

Readjust your routine
“Take advantage of your earlier start for the day, and shift your activities to an earlier schedule, including dinner, exercise and bedtime,” Krieger suggested.

Trick your brain:
“The brain looks for visual cues to know what time it is. Another thing you can do is change the time on a wristwatch 15 minutes ahead each day before daylight saving time to provide that visual cue,” Ash said.

Which is correct: daylight saving time or daylight savings time?

According to thesaurus.comthe correct answer is: daylight saving time.

“Daylight-saving time (singular saving) is technically the correct version: the practice is saving daylight,” the website says. “Still, daylight-savings time (with the plural savings) is so commonly used that it’s become an accepted variant of daylight-saving time.”

Thesaurus.com says the “s” at the end of the phrase may have caught on because the plural of “saving” is often used when referring to money — for example, a savings account.

“Then there’s the question of the hyphen,” the explanation continues, “Some leave it off while others include it. We hyphenate because daylight-saving together modifies the word time that directly follow

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