15 Mar Sleep Awareness Week and Daylight Savings Time
Any coincidence that Sleep Awareness Week and Daylight Savings Time occur at the same time?
Amazing, isn’t it? That changing the clock an hour can make such a difference in our lives? Disrupt our sleep, even if it’s only for a few days? Spring forward, fall back. Which do you prefer? Or would you rather they didn’t change the clock at all? (If that’s you, then you should move to Arizona!) I like having more daylight at the end of the day! My wife, however, absolutely hates driving to work in the dark! You’d have to be an Octogenarian to remember a time before DST, being it started in the U.S. way back in 1942! In 1966 Congress implemented the Uniform Time Act making DST an annual occurrence.
Moving the clock just one hour: can it really make that much difference? Here’s one study that shows a 25% jump in the # of heart attacks occurring the Monday after DST starts! Really? The same study showed the opposite effect also to be true: a 21% DROP in heart attacks on the following Tuesday after returning to standard time. Who woulda thought?
March 13th marks Sleep Awareness Week, started back in 1998 as an annual public education campaign to encourage Americans to prioritize their sleep…..which means you are MORE LIKELY to be MORE HEALTHY. Learn more about the National Sleep Foundations sleep awareness here.