An extra hour of sleep — or possibly not if you’re a night owl — is on the calendar for this weekend.
Daylight-saving time ends early Sunday morning, and it will be time to turn the clocks back an hour to return to standard time.
If you find yourself extra tired for a day or two around fall and spring time changes, you’re probably not the only one yawning.
For every hour of change, your body takes about a day to adjust, said Dr. Danny Bartel, a neurologist who works as medical director of the Sleep Lab at United Regional Health Care System.
“It’s the same as jet lag,” Bartel said. “You change the clock, you change your Circadian rhythm.”
A Circadian rhythm is a daily rhythmic activity cycle, based on 24-hour intervals, that is exhibited by many organisms including man.
While many people will be back to normal by Monday or Tuesday, people who work nights, have staggered schedules, or just plain don’t get enough sleep might deal with extreme tiredness and other sleep troubles throughout the year.
People who work varied shifts — switching every few days from nights to days, for example — don’t really get enough time for their bodies to adjust and get on a consistent sleep schedule.
Often, weight issues and sleep problems go hand-in-hand, raising the risk of serious troubles such as heart attacks or strokes because of breathing problems during sleep.
Too many sleepless nights (or days) can become a health nightmare. For years, people didn’t really think of sleep apnea as much more than a nuisance, but more recently, it has become clear that it carries a higher risk of heart attack and stroke, Bartel said.
Snoring alone puts you at a 2-1/2 times greater risk for heart attack, and the risk is 1-1/2 times greater for stroke.
“When they’re listening to their husband or wife snoring,” Bartel said, “they’re listening to their life ebb away.”
In addition to those risk factors, people who don’t get enough sleep are more emotional, said Jaquita Warnock, sleep lab manager. It’s also possible to fall asleep at the worst times, including while driving or during the middle of the day.
Every cell — even those in plants and in your skin — follows a certain rhythm, Bartel said.
Human body temperature is closely connected with the waking and sleep schedule, rising through the day until it nears time for sleep again. About that time, the temperature tends to drop about two degrees.
When the sun comes up, hormonal changes rouse you and take you through the day. After your brain has worked for a while, it gets depleted, and an overwhelming urge to sleep sets in.
The darker your sleeping environment, the better.
“Theoretically, we’re supposed to work during the day and sleep at night,” Bartel said.
Sure, that might have been the case for just about everyone hundreds of years ago, but we live in a 24-hours-a-day world, and for many people, that means staying up nights working, and sleeping when it’s possible.
According to United Regional’s Web site, 130 million people in America have sleeping problems of some sort, and dozens of sleep disorders exist, ranging from narcolepsy, which involves falling asleep during everyday activities including driving, to sleep apnea, which involves breathing disruptions, to insomnia, which means people have trouble falling asleep in the first place.
Courtesy – Jessica Langdon (http://www.timesrecordnews.com)
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