CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — ‘Fall back’ and ‘spring forward’ are the two terms that mean daylight saving time has arrived and as of Sunday, we’ve all sprung forward.
“Right now, what happened is we just had a daylight saving and we move forward one hour that means that we got one hour less sleep,” said Dr. Salim Surani a local Pulmonologist and Board-Certified Sleep Specialist.
Dr. Surani says studies show how that lost hour of sleep can take a real toll on our health.
“If you look at the Swedish study, they found that there was an increase in risk of having heart attack and that attack increased in first three weekdays after switching to daylight saving in the spring,” said Dr. Surani.
“The people who are going in for next couple of days after daylight saving were more tired and they found some increase in traffic accident.”
Not only have studies shown an increase in traffic accidents but also workplace injuries and even some things we would never even think daylight saving would be linked to.
“Daylight saving has also been linked to miscarriage and infertilization in the patients,” said Dr. Surani.
Dr. Surani says that missing hour can also affect our body’s natural rhythm.
“So, in other words now your body is going in a cycle and your daylight saving makes the cycle go in a different direction and that creates a lot of confusion and your body can not decide how to deal with that,” said Dr. Surani.
Because of these impacts Dr. Surani and The American Academy of Sleep Medicine say we should get rid of daylight saving time.
“If we had one standard national daylight-saving time, I think that would be much better for our sleep health, mental health not having stresses in the heart, not having an increase in traffic accidents so and so forth,” said Dr. Surani.
There are ways to help you adjust to that lost hour of sleep.
“Tell them to wake up at the same time but put a 10,000 light therapy to try to create an environment that the sun is out,” said Dr. Surani.
You can also take simple steps like going to bed early and even a cup of coffee in the morning to help wake you up.
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