Ready to “Spring Forward” on March 7th? Daylight Savings Time is here!

This weekend we will be “springing forward” to begin Daylight Savings Time. While our smart devices will automatically make the time change for us, do remember to set your ‘not-so-smart’ wall clocks, alarm clocks, appliances and watches one hour ahead on Saturday night before you go to bed.

So, what’s the deal with Daylight Savings Time, anyway?  “The basic idea [of Daylight Savings Time] is to make the best use of daylight hours by shifting the clock forward in the Spring and backward in the Fall. Daylight Saving Time has been in use throughout much of the United States, Canada and Europe since World War I.”¹

On the plus side, we will have more daylight, so sunset on Sunday, March 8 will be 6:42pm (yeah!). On the minus side, we will lose an hour of sleep (uggh!) and it will be pretty dark when you wake up for a few weeks (sunrise on Sunday, March 8 will be 7:09am – oof!).

Losing an hour of sleep can be a challenge! Did you know that there are more heart attacks during time transitions?²

Here’s a few tips from the good folks at Vanderbilt’s Sleep Disorders Clinic to help you make the transition as smooth as possible:

http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2013/03/vanderbilt-sleep-expert-offers-daylight-saving-survival-tips/

Happy (almost) Spring!

Image courtesy of Ben Dobson through the Creative Commons license.

1.     Espenak F, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Daylight saving time. 2008; http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/daylightsaving.html. Accessed March 2, 2015.

2.    Janszky I, Ljung R. Shifts to and from daylight saving time and incidence of myocardial infarction. The New England journal of medicine. Oct 30 2008;359(18):1966-1968.