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Tag: circadian rhythm

  • A time change is coming soon to South Florida. How that could affect your health

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    The end of daylight saving time is nearly here.

    Soon, South Florida will get an extra hour of sleep as we “fall back” and set our clocks and watches behind one hour.

    How could the end of daylight saving time affect your health? And how long will it take for your body to adjust to the time change?

    Here’s what to know, including tips from sleep experts:

    When does daylight saving time end?

    Daylight saving time ends across most of the United States on the first Sunday of November, according to Time and Date, an online world clock.

    At 2 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 2, clocks in Florida and other states will move back by one hour, give you an extra hour of sleep that night.

    Sunset will occur one hour earlier once the time shift takes place.

    We’ll then see less daylight in the evenings and more light in the mornings.

    Daylight saving time ends this weekend.
    Daylight saving time ends this weekend. iStockphoto Getty Images

    How early will it start getting dark in Florida?

    After daylight saving time ends on Nov. 2, sunrise will be 6:30 a.m. and sunset will be at 5:38 p.m. in Miami, according to Time and Date.

    The shortest day of the year will be on Sunday, Dec. 21, the winter solstice.

    The sun will rise at 7:03 a.m. and set at 5:35 p.m. in Miami on the winter solstice.

    Is daylight saving time bad for my health?

    Observing daylight saving time — moving clocks forward an hour in the spring and “falling back” an hour in autumn — is “acutely bad for our health,” according to Stanford Medicine researchers.

    The biannual time shift tends to affect peoples’ circadian rhythms — the body’s 24-hour clock — which regulate several physiological processes.

    When circadian cycles get out of sync, a range of poor health outcomes can occur, according to Stanford Medicine.

    “The more light exposure you get at the wrong times, the weaker the circadian clock,” Jamie Zeitzer, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford Medicine, wrote in a Sept. 15 article. “All of these things that are downstream — for example, your immune system, your energy — don’t match up quite as well.”

    How could daylight saving time affect my sleep?

    Clocks are scheduled to “fall back” on Sunday as part of Daylight Savings Time.
    Clocks are scheduled to “fall back” on Sunday as part of Daylight Savings Time. Photo by Sonja Langford via Unsplash

    Dr. Michael Breus, clinical sleep specialist and founder of SleepDoctor.com, compared the twice-annual time shifts to jet lag.

    He said the start of daylight saving time in the spring can impact your cognitive, emotional and physical well-being.

    The shift forward has been linked to a jump in fatal traffic crashes and heart attacks, according to Stanford Medicine.

    The end of daylight saving time can also disrupt your body’s natural rhythms, especially if you’re already sleep-deprived, Breus said.

    When you get an extra hour of rest, “Your body then wants to stay in sleep — something that we call sleep inertia,” Breus said. “This is the body wanting to stay in a deeper stage of sleep, to become more nourished, and it just kind of continues to want that sleep process to occur.”

    Smoke from the Gifford Fire turns the sky orange at sunset in a view from California Valley on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2025.
    Smoke from the Gifford Fire turns the sky orange at sunset in a view from California Valley on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2025. Brittany App

    How long will it take to adjust to time shift?

    How quickly you adapt to the time shift depends on who you are, according to Breus.

    Babies and older adults tend to struggle the most to adapt to the time change.

    Infants are more sensitive to changes in light and routine in general, he explained, while seniors are more vulnerable to shifts in sunshine because their eyes are less adept at taking in light.

    Most people, however, will need about a day to transition to clocks falling back an hour, Breus said, the same amount of time you’d need to adjust to a new time zone when traveling.

    When clocks fall back on Sunday, Nov. 2, most people in Florida should feel back to normal by the next day.

    “It should not have a tremendous effect past a day, maybe two days,” Breus told The Sacramento Bee. “When you’re sleep-deprived, that’s when we start to see bigger and bigger effects. But generally speaking, (the effect) should wear off … within a day to two.”

    Mark Nakamura nakamuraphoto.com

    See best ways to prepare for fall time change

    You can more easily adapt to the end of daylight saving time by making adjustments to sleep routines and light exposure, according to Breus.

    Following the fall time change, he suggested wearing sunglasses in the morning to adjust to the increased daylight in the early hours of the day.

    In the evening, he said, you should take a 30-minute walk after dinner or use a bright light therapy device to help ease your body’s transition.

    You should also limit caffeine use around the time change since it can interfere with your sleep, according to Dr. Charles Czeisler, a Mass General Brigham sleep medicine specialist.

    Czeisler recommended not consuming caffeine after 2 or 3 p.m. since the substance can stay in the body for up to 10 hours.

    “You might want to eat an hour earlier than you usually would for a few days,” Czeisler said.

    As for adjusting your sleep routine, Breus advised moving up your bedtime by 15 minutes each day in the lead-up to Sunday, Nov. 2, “to make the transition a little bit easier.”

    “You really do want to maintain consistent sleep habits,” he said. “So sticking to regular sleep and wake times, even on the weekends with this transition … is going to be important.”

    Related Stories from Miami Herald

    Hannah Poukish

    The Tribune

    Hannah Poukish covers San Luis Obispo County and California news as The Tribune’s service journalism reporter. She previously reported and produced stories for The Sacramento Bee, CNN, Spectrum News and The Mercury News in San Jose. She graduated from Stanford University with a master’s degree in journalism. 

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  • Social Jetlag Is Real—and It’s Worse for Your Health Than You Think

    Social Jetlag Is Real—and It’s Worse for Your Health Than You Think

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    It’s the sort of buzzwordy phrase that you would expect to hear at a business seminar: social jetlag. But it’s actually a well-studied phenomenon that might explain why you or your night owl friends often feel groggy at your day job. Unlike garden variety jetlag, social jetlag can also wreak long term damage to your health.

    Tick tock goes our body clock

    Everyone has their own circadian rhythm, or internal body clock. This clock helps dictate how our bodies function during the 24-hour period of any given day, including when and how long we want to sleep. People fall along a spectrum of preferred sleep times, known as chronotypes. Early birds prefer to wake up early and go to bed early, while night owls tend to go to bed late and wake up late.

    A person’s circadian rhythm and chronotype is usually most influenced by the natural day/night cycle along with their genetics. But modern life is now filled with things that can make it harder for some of us to stick to our body clock as often as we’d like to, such as school and work on weekdays. This mismatch is then thought to cause social jetlag.

    The term was first coined in a 2006 study by scientists Marc Wittmann, Jenny Dinich, Martha Merrow, and Till Roenneberg. They defined it as a discrepancy between our preferred and forced-upon sleep schedules throughout a typical week. A night owl is likely expected to wake up earlier during the school/work week, for instance, and would only catch up on the hours and type of sleep they prefer on the weekend. An early bird, by contrast, is more likely to get the same amount and timing of sleep the whole week. Estimates vary, but as much as two-thirds of working/studying people in industrialized countries might experience social jetlag, losing at least an hour of sleep on weekdays.

    Reams of research have found that drastic disruptions to the circadian rhythm, such as having to regularly work night shifts, can harm our long-term health. So-called shift workers are significantly more likely to experience sleep disorders, heart disease, and diabetes. But even the more subtle alterations caused by social jetlag seem to wear people down over time.

    The harms of social jetlag

    A 2020 study found that night shift workers had higher levels of social jetlag compared to day shift workers, and that both night shift work and social jetlag were associated with a greater risk of obesity, for instance. A similar pattern has been seen in school children, with a 2020 study finding that night owls were more likely to have social jetlag as well as higher rates of obesity and other metabolic alterations. Studies have also found a link between social jetlag and type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and depression.

    Interestingly enough, social jetlag might paradoxically be a sign of better health in some groups of people. A 2023 study of older adults over 60 found that high social jetlag was tied to worse blood sugar and blood pressure control in working people, but associated with better markers of each in retired people. One possible explanation for this paradox is that social jetlag in retired people can represent an intentionally more active social life, which can be healthy in of itself, compared to the forced, more stressful drudgery of work.

    Outside of retirees, though, social jetlag appears to be a subtle but serious public health concern given how common it is—one worth tackling with major policy moves, experts have argued. Scientists like chronobiologist Till Roenneberg, one of the originators of the phrase, have highlighted more flexible work schedules, later school start times, and the ending of Daylight Saving Time as some possible ways to reduce social jetlag. You don’t have to be a night owl to see how those kinds of changes would make plenty of people less stressed and a bit more blessed.

    More: Things You Didn’t Know About Sleep

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    Ed Cara

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  • How springing forward to daylight saving time could affect your health, and how to prepare

    How springing forward to daylight saving time could affect your health, and how to prepare

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    WASHINGTON — Most of America “springs forward” Sunday for daylight saving time and losing that hour of sleep can do more than leave you tired and cranky the next day. It also could harm your health.

    Darker mornings and more evening light together knock your body clock out of whack – which means daylight saving time can usher in sleep trouble for weeks or longer. Studies have even found an uptick in heart attacks and strokes right after the March time change.

    (video from 2023 daylight saving time)

    There are ways to ease the adjustment, including getting more sunshine to help reset your circadian rhythm for healthful sleep.

    “Not unlike when one travels across many time zones, how long it can take is very different for different people,” said Dr. Eduardo Sanchez of the American Heart Association. “Understand that your body is transitioning.”

    When does daylight saving time start?

    Daylight saving time begins Sunday at 2 a.m., an hour of sleep vanishing in most of the U.S. The ritual will reverse on Nov. 3 when clocks “fall back” as daylight saving time ends.

    Hawaii and most of Arizona don’t make the spring switch, sticking to standard time year-round along with Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Worldwide, dozens of countries also observe daylight saving time, starting and ending at different dates.

    Some people try to prepare for daylight saving time’s sleep jolt by going to bed a little earlier two or three nights ahead. With a third of American adults already not getting the recommended seven hours of nightly shuteye, catching up can be difficult.

    What happens to your brain when it’s lighter later?

    The brain has a master clock that is set by exposure to sunlight and darkness. This circadian rhythm is a roughly 24-hour cycle that determines when we become sleepy and when we’re more alert. The patterns change with age, one reason that early-to-rise youngsters evolve into hard-to-wake teens.

    Morning light resets the rhythm. By evening, levels of a hormone called melatonin begin to surge, triggering drowsiness. Too much light in the evening – that extra hour from daylight saving time – delays that surge and the cycle gets out of sync.

    Sleep deprivation is linked to heart disease, cognitive decline, obesity and numerous other problems. And that circadian clock affects more than sleep, also influencing things like heart rate, blood pressure, stress hormones and metabolism.

    How does the time change affect your health?

    Fatal car crashes temporarily jump the first few days after the spring time change, according to a study of U.S. traffic fatalities. The risk was highest in the morning, and researchers attributed it to sleep deprivation.

    Then there’s the cardiac connection. The American Heart Association points to studies that suggest an uptick in heart attacks on the Monday after daylight saving time begins, and in strokes for two days afterward.

    Doctors already know that heart attacks, especially severe ones, are a bit more common on Mondays generally – and in the morning, when blood is more clot-prone.

    It’s not clear why the time change would add to the Monday connection, Sanchez said, although probably something about the abrupt circadian disruption exacerbates factors such as high blood pressure in people already at risk.

    How to prepare for daylight saving time

    Go to bed a little earlier Friday and Saturday nights, and try to get more morning light. Moving up daily routines, like dinner time or when you exercise, also may help cue your body to start adapting, sleep experts advise.

    Afternoon naps and caffeine as well as evening light from phones and other electronic devices can make adjusting to an earlier bedtime even harder.

    Stay tuned: Some health groups, including the American Medical Association and American Academy of Sleep Medicine, have said it’s time to do away with time switches and that sticking with standard time year-round aligns better with the sun – and human biology.

    ___

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

    Copyright © 2024 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

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    AP

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  • Study: More Daylight Creates Less Risk for Mental Health Disorders | High Times

    Study: More Daylight Creates Less Risk for Mental Health Disorders | High Times

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    As we navigate these darker months during the winter season, conversations of seasonal affective disorder and tackling the depressive feelings that can come with less daylight are pervasive. Though, exposure to daylight may have an even more profound impact when it comes to mental health.

    A new analysis of more than 85,000 people via UK Biobank data found that individuals who spend more time in daylight carry a lower risk of major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), psychosis and self-harm behavior. 

    The study, published in the journal Nature Mental Health, also independently found that greater light exposure during nighttime was associated with increased risks of major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, PTSD, psychosis, bipolar disorder and self-harm behavior.

    The Impact of Circadian Rhythm Disturbances on Mental Health

    Authors note the impact of the circadian rhythm — or the 24-hour internal clock in our brain that regulates alertness and sleepiness by responding to light changes in our surroundings — as it pertains to many psychiatric disorders, namely the disturbance of this natural cycle. “Therefore,” researchers said, “habitual light exposure may represent an environmental risk factor for susceptibility to psychiatric disorders.”

    Researchers looked to investigate whether exposure to natural light during the day and artificial light at night had any relation to psychiatric disorders involving circadian rhythm disturbances. They tested two primary hypotheses, that greater light exposure in the day is associated with lower risk for psychiatric disorders and better mood and that greater light exposure at night is associated with higher risk for psychiatric disorders and poorer mood.

    “These hypotheses were motivated by the known effects of day and night-time light exposure on the human circadian system and the well-established links between circadian disruption and psychiatric disorders,” researchers wrote.

    Researchers examined data from 86,631 individuals in the UK Biobank database, with light exposure data gathered in 2013 when more than 100,000 UK Biobank participants took part in a seven-day physical activity and light exposure study. Participants wore an accelerometer with a light sensor on their dominant wrist for a week to record data on their movements and light levels. Psychiatric data were later collected in 2016 as participants completed an online mental health questionnaire.

    More Light at Night, Less Light During the Day Increases Mental Health Risks

    Ultimately, the analysis proved both of the researchers’ hypotheses correct. 

    Results indicated that higher exposure to light at night was associated with a number of major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, PTSD and psychosis, while higher daytime light exposure was associated with lower odds of major depressive disorder, self-harm and psychosis.

    “Our findings demonstrate a consistent association of light-exposure patterns that are healthy for circadian rhythms with better psychiatric outcomes,” authors concluded.

    They also noted that, in today’s modern world, humans tend to spend roughly 90% of the day indoors, with our light-exposure patterns being less bright in the day and more bright at night than at previous points in our evolutionary history. 

    “Addressing this deviation from our natural light/dark cycles may improve the general mental health of people in industrialized societies,” they said.

    A Potential Intervention for Mental Health and Invitation for Further Investigation

    The study provides new insight on the topic as the largest examination of objectively measured light exposure and mental health to date. Still, it’s not without its limitations.

    While there are “well-supported causal mechanisms” linking bright nighttime light and dim daytime light with circadian disruption, and circadian disruption to mental health, authors acknowledged the possibility of reverse causation, highlighting the need for future longitudinal studies. “However, the robustness of our findings to adjustment for confounders, including physical activity and sleep, provides support for our interpretation,” they state.

    Authors also note that light monitoring was performed using a wrist-worn device which was not resigned to measure light at the ocular level. Additionally, the light monitoring and outcome variables were measured with almost two years between, so it’s possible that light exposure patterns changed during that time. 

    Still, as we continue broadening our horizons and exploring new and innovative solutions for mental health, the findings could prove useful for future approaches.

    “These results suggest that light-exposure interventions may act in a transdiagnostic manner to improve mental health by strengthening circadian rhythms,” researchers write. “Brighter days and darker nights may be a simple, freely available, non-pharmacological intervention to enhance mental health that is easily implementable in a community setting.”

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    Keegan Williams

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