Topline
Most people in the United States lost an hour of sleep this weekend as clocks sprang forward into Daylight Saving Time, a disruptive biannual shift experts warn is harmful and adds to an already weighty sleep debt that has wide-reaching ramifications for health and well-being.
Most of the U.S. shifted clocks to DST on Sunday.
Key Facts
Poor sleep has been linked to an increased risk for a host of chronic health conditions including diabetes, inflammation, high blood pressure, depression, stroke and heart disease.
Losing sleep can also make you gain weight, research suggests, possibly due to a number of factors—including having more time to eat, less energy to exercise and hormonal changes that affect appetite.
Sleep deprivation leads to impaired decision making and judgment—research shows that sleep-deprived drivers are more likely to have car crashes—and can cause problems with memory.
Research also suggests we are less generous when tired, and charitable donations in the U.S. drop by 10% in the days following the clocks changing.
Poor sleep also appears to dampen the immune system, and research found sleeping less than six hours the night before getting a shot led to weaker immune responses, though only for men.
College students who sleep less tend to have worse grades as well, recent research found, which linked each lost hour of average nightly sleep at the start of the academic term with a 0.07-point drop in the end-of-term GPA.
News Peg
Across most of the U.S., clocks sprang forward an hour into daylight saving time on Sunday. The shift, which polling suggests is very unpopular, causes the average American to lose 40 minutes of sleep the night after. This loss does not appear to be recouped when the clocks “fall back” in fall and adds to the sleep debt of an already sleep-deprived nation.
Key Background
Sleep plays a crucial role in human well-being and touches on every aspect of health. Scientists do not understand precisely what happens when we sleep or why we need it, though research suggests it plays a key role in memory formation, clears waste from the brain, repairs cells and influences our hormones and metabolism. Though precise estimates vary, research generally agrees that Americans are not getting nearly as much sleep as they need or as often as they need it. The exact amount of sleep recommended changes throughout life, but adults are recommended to get at least seven hours per night. The CDC estimates one in three adults are not getting this. Experts, including the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the American Medical Association, support scrapping the biannual changing of the clocks and using just one time system, but do not believe the U.S. should permanently move to daylight saving time. They argue permanent standard time is better aligned with human biology and say the system will be better for public health and safety. Sleep plays a crucial role in human well-being and touches on every aspect of health. Scientists do not understand precisely what happens when we sleep or why we need it, though research suggests it plays a key role in memory formation, clears waste from the brain, repairs cells and influences our hormones and metabolism.
Big Number
$411 billion. That’s how much poor sleep among workers is costing the U.S. each year, according to RAND Europe, which found workers who get insufficient sleep report lower productivity. The figure, equivalent to losing around 1.23 million working days due to insufficient sleep each year, ranks the U.S. first when it comes to economic losses from insufficient sleep.
What To Watch For
Lawmakers and experts are pushing to do away with the twice-yearly changing of the clocks. While there is broad support for a permanent shift to one time zone, there is little agreement on which time this should be. The Senate voted unanimously to make daylight saving time permanent last year, though the bill failed in the House of Representatives, reportedly due to disagreements over what time system to implement. The bill was reintroduced in March and is likely to run into similar problems if passed back to the House.
Further Reading
The Sleep Debt Collector Is Here (NYT)
It Goes by the Name ‘Bedtime Procrastination,’ and You Can Probably Guess What It Is (Scientific American)
Daylight Saving: How America’s Annual ‘Spring Forward’ Is Bad For Your Health (Forbes)