With Daylight Saving Time, the clocks fall back an hour, giving us an extra 60 minutes of sleep each night, right? Well, not necessarily.
While it may seem like on paper that we should be staying in bed for an extra hour compared to the spring and summer, the reality is that abruptly changing your sleep schedule may actually cause you to lose an hour instead! Even more frustrating is that while you may be in bed longer, you may just be spending that extra time lying there restlessly rather than actually sleeping.
"People may stay up later [after the time change] — that's a little bit easier to do," Dr. Alfred Lewy, director of Oregon Health & Science University's Sleep and Mood Disorders Laboratory, tells Yahoo! Health. "But they're not sleeping in that hour later, because their body clock is waking them up. So they're not actually getting that extra hour of sleep on Saturday night, and then on Sunday night, they may actually be getting less sleep than they did the week before."
To help get your brain and body's internal clock back on the same page and ensure you aren't actually losing sleep with Daylight Saving, sleep specialist Dr. Jaspal Singh recommends going outdoors and taking in some sunshine. Just 15 minutes of sun per day — or even leaving the shades open in the morning to let in sunlight — can help even out your sleep schedule. Dimming your lights at night can also drift you off to sleep earlier.
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