This weekend marks the beginning of daylight savings time which means losing an hour of sleep. Iowa Sleep Disorder Center founder, Steven Zorn, says it’s hard for some people to recover from the loss of sleep. “Well if they’re already sleep deprived adding another hour of sleep certainly doesn’t help. And that can be an issue in coordination and reaction times. People often feel like they don’t get back to their normal self for about a week,” he says.
Dr. Zorn says going to bed twenty minutes earlier leading up to the time change can ease the transition, and if that doesn’t work, a short nap on Sunday afternoon can help. Zorn, says people in general don’t get enough sleep and this time change makes it worse. “An Epworth sleepiness scale is a simple scale that a lot of sleep centers have. And it’s measuring a person’s subjective sensation of sleepiness,” Zorn says. “And about 20 percent of our population feels like they’re sleepier than desired, their Epworth sleepiness scale is running above 10.”
Zorn says while some believe setting the alarm an hour later will help, sticking to a normal schedule is the best way to adjust to the time change.