Daylight Savings time. Does it increase your health risks?

The idea of daylight savings is to save electricity because there are more hours of natural light. Studies have shown the savings to be fairly nominal—the time change leading people to switch on the lights earlier in the morning instead or cranking up the air conditioning, for example. 

Along with the saving of electricity comes with the increased health risks. The latest study suggests turning your clock ahead for DST may set the stage for a small increased risk of heart attack the following day. But the hour shift in sleep schedule could also have more serious effects on some people's health, according to experts on circadian rhythms, particularly in people with certain pre-existing health problems. "Most people don't have much of a problem — they can adjust their body clock quickly. Eventually, after a couple of days, they already can adapt to the new schedule," says Dr. Xiaoyong Yang, an assistant professor of comparative medicine and cellular and molecular physiology at Yale University, who points out that many people routinely recover from slight shifts in their sleep-wake cycles — after staying up late at night to go to party, for instance. "But for some groups of people — people who have depression or a heart problem — there's some research that suggests that [they] have a higher risk of suicide and heart attack." 

Every cell in your body has its own internal clock, including cells in your immune system. Each cell’s internal clock helps it prepare for a stress or stimulus. When we mess with that internal clock, your cells are not able to prepare for the usual stresses.

So, when you set your clock forward and miss an hour of sleep that your cells were expecting, the negative impact of stress worsens, having a detrimental effect on your body. Immune response and inflammation vary with the time of day. Your immune function is temporarily compromised while your body “resyncs”—even if your sleep is decreased by only an hour. This is why many people feel so discombobulated right after the time change.

Experts disagree about exactly how long it takes your body to recover. Some say two to three days, others say it’s more like five. Till Roenneberg says his research indicates most people never truly recover. The effects of a change in time/sleep schedule are worse if your health is already compromised. If your immune system is stressed by poor nutrition, lack of exercise, or high levels of stress, your risk for an adverse event will be amplified. Time changes could raise levels of stress hormones and inflammatory chemicals just enough to trigger a heart attack—especially if you are particularly vulnerable.

University of Alabama Associate Professor Martin Young suggests the following natural strategies to help your body resync after the time change:

• Wake up 30 minutes earlier on Saturday and Sunday, to minimize the impact of getting up earlier on Monday morning
• Eat a nutritious breakfast
• Go outside in the sunlight in the early morning
• Exercise in the mornings over the weekend, in accordance with your overall level of health and fitness
• Consider setting your clock ahead on Friday evening, allowing an extra day to adjust over the weekend