Daylight saving time starts on Sunday. What should you do to prepare?
With the time change, you’ll gain an hour of daylight but lose an hour of sleep.
“It can be something subtle, like just even 15 minutes a day. Try to go to bed at least 15 minutes earlier just to get adjusted,” said Dr. Anita Naik, a pulmonary and sleep medicine physician at MedStar Franklin Square Hospital in Maryland.
She said it’s also important to soak in that sunlight.
“It’s important that we continue to give our body natural cues to going to sleep and waking up, and that really is in the form of sunlight exposure,” she said. “Getting exposed to natural sunlight earlier in the day definitely helps us regulate our internal clock.”
Naik said you also want to avoid too much texting and similar screen time close to bedtime.
“We really want to avoid blue light from phones and computers close to bedtime, because that can definitely disrupt our sleep,” she said.
She said that it’s important to be mindful of our bodies when it comes to time changes: “Our bodies are on their own circadian clock.”
Dr. Ashwini Sardana, medical director and primary care physician MedStar Health Primary Care in McLean, Virginia, said the time change takes some getting used to.
“Many of us have cabin fever. Many of us really want the winter to end and say spring has sprung,” Sardana said. “We look forward to these longer days. But that being said, the body needs time to adjust.”
Sardana said it’s also important to think of your children and be mindful that it may take time for them to get used to the time change as well.
“That one hour really affects the little ones,” he said. “They wake up Sunday and Monday with deer-in-the-headlight look and they’re equally confused as to what’s going on, because an hour of sleep deprivation affects them more than anybody else.”
So what can you do to help your kids get used to the change?
“A bedtime bath helps and reading some favorite books toward the bedtime helps them feel secure and gets them to sleep earlier by transitioning them,” he said. “Adjust their routine by moving their bedtime by 10 to 15 minutes each night, two or three days before the day the clock shifts, because that helps them get that adaptation in their body by Sunday.”
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