Sleep Dynamic Therapy

Archive for the ‘Daylight Savings Time’ Category

I just completed a brief interview on WTOP-AM in Washington D.C. on the impact of DST. As before, in my clinical experience, the more severe your complaints following the DST change, the more likely an underlying physical sleep disorder is part of the equation. The astute interviewer, Nathan Roberts, asked me if this problem was similar to jet lag. And, I feel once again that the more sleep difficulties you report following your travel experiences, it strongly suggests the presence of an underlying sleep problem.

The single most effective technique for dealing with Daylight Savings Time is to turn your clock forward when you wake up Saturday morning instead of waiting to change it on Saturday night or Sunday morning. By changing it early in the day, your mind and body easily grow accustom to the new time change, and you soon forget about the lost hour because the “loss is spread throughout the day.” In fact, if you ignore the clock most of Saturday, then your typical bedtime rolls around that night, and you will have programmed yourself to go to sleep even though it is technically one hour earlier than the normal start of your sleep period.

This technique is not just a simple charade; your mind and body really do grow accustom to the time change. Plus, since most of us already suffer slight bouts of sleep deprivation from time to time, we are that much more likely to welcome the process, jump into bed, and go to sleep. Psychologically, it’s very comforting to climb under the sheets and know that you are not going to lose any sleep that night.

We have used this technique in our family for years and found that it works fairly consistently to get us all into bed very close to our usual bedtimes and wake up on Sunday morning with a healthy head start on DST.