Newstalk ZB
By RNZ We all got an extra hour’s sleep today - but does just one hour really affect us? We ask Dr Karyn O’Keefe, of the Sleep/Wake Research Centre. “It does. There’s really clear research out there that shows that missing out on sleep by an hour or more can lead to poorer functioning the next day.” That one-hour shift can make it harder to get to sleep, and hence harder to wake up, she explains. So it affects different aspects of functioning such as sleepiness, but also mood, reaction time, motivation, concentration and decision making. Dr Karyn O'Keefe is a senior lecturer at the Sleep/Wake Research Centre. Supplied (RNZ) What happens to our brain and body clock when daylight saving switches over? Daylight saving, O’Keeffe says, causes what’s called “circadian disruption”. “Everyone has a body clock in the brain that needs to be synchronised to the sun in order to stay healthy and function well. And of course, when we move our bodies to a different sun time suddenly the internal clock in our brains is not synchronised anymore and that disruption also causes problems.” The combination of this with that poor quality of sleep feels a bit like jetlag (without the joy of a holiday). “Suddenly we’ve made this one-hour shift ... which seems like it’s really small but it’s enough to cause some problems.” How long does it take for our body to find a new rhythm? The spring transition is the easier one - going into daylight saving time, putting the clock forward an hour “we just squash an hour out of our day”. “What happens is that when we go to bed, it’s like 10.30pm. Our body clocks are thinking that it’s earlier than that, so we don’t actually start to feel sleepier until later than we normally would - so we have trouble falling off to sleep. “Then when we go to wake up in the morning our natural wake time is actually an hour later.” It’s not such a problem on Sunday, but on Monday morning we might feel robbed of that extra hour when getting up to start the working week. “We’re still thinking that we should be waking an hour later with the old body clock time.” “So we can be frustrated in the evening or at night and tired and groggy in the morning and have short sleep as well. It’s like this combination of feeling really groggy and grotty a couple of days at least.” What can I do to help my brain and body ease through it? If you’re organised or a sensitive sleeper you could give sleep shifting a go - starting to adjust your body clock gradually in the days leading up to daylight savings. “The way you would do that was you’d go to bed ... 20 minutes earlier on Friday night, 40 minutes earlier on Saturday night and then on Sunday morning, you just wake at your usual time. “That helps us sort of assist with our sleep and also make sure that we don’t sleep in too much and muck up our timing of sleep.” The other big thing is getting plenty of sunlight on Sunday, throwing the curtains open in the morning to soak up as much as you can. “If we can do that we have a better chance of actually synchronising our body clocks with the sun pretty fast.” On the flip side, at the end of the day, avoid light, black out your bedroom and try to make it feel like bedtime. Does being old/young/healthy/stressed play any part? “Yeah, there are a couple of things,” O’Keeffe says. “One of the outcomes that we see sometimes with daylight saving transitions is that people who are vulnerable to heart problems can have those problems exacerbated. So there is a little bit of research out there to show that daylight saving transitions can lead to a higher risk of having a heart event of some kind.” She says people who are extreme early birds or night owls will also have a harder time picking up a new sleep pattern, rather than the average sleeper. “When a person is an evening type trying to make this transition in the spring, it’s really hard for them in particular to make the shift in their body clock. So it takes them longer basically to get there....
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