How Long do Health Effects of Daylight Saving Time Last?

0:00I got a call from my friend Kevin English, and he is so excited because he wanted to let me know his nephew Sean who works at Henry Ford Health had a hand in setting up this interview for us, you know, I love Bob Reigny half for years. The guy who runs the show over there MJ vote who helps raise money. I used to do minds of medicine. I got a special affinity toward Henry Ford Health, but now I'm even happy because I'm helping Kevin English celebrate his nephew Sean as we welcome a sleep researcher with Henry Ford Health and that is Philip Chang who has his PhD. Philip, welcome to Paul W Smith and focus. Nice to have you here. Thank you so much. Glad to be here. The health benefits or problems if you agree there are any. How long will these effects of daylight saving time last now that we made the big switch? Oh boy, it can last. We would expect a couple of days through maybe even three or four days. Some people just faster than others, so there's going to be some differences, but I would expect a few days within a week for sure. You know, we had a story yesterday, yesterday last week that talked about

1:16new research indicating that though this is all overblown, but what's not overblown is there are more accidents and more heart attacks following the time change period. That's the people aren't making that up. Absolutely. Now, if you were to choose, because I'm all against the time change, I don't think it makes any sense anymore. Little did I know there'd be such an argument about whether we would pick daylight saving time or standard time and stick with one, which would you stick with if or up to you, Philip Chang? Yeah, so the medical community is very much in favor of not just being done with the time change, but in particular, the sleep research community has consensus statements around a standard time being the one that we are in favor of. That's what we've always heard, and we used to get that from our former news director, Dick Kaffner, and so I went with standard and got bashed by all the people who play golf and do other things have kids walking to school.

2:19So, you know, I'm not going to step back into that, but medical community still is standing by standard. All right, what can you tell us to do now that it's here to try to minimize the problems? I love the get morning sun. I go out when I go out in the morning. I put my face up to the sun. I don't do it for as long as I should 10 to 15 minutes, but I do that. What other things would you suggest? Yeah, you know, our bodies actually are faced with the challenge right now is to become later, right? Because the clocks have shifted dramatically or quickly, I should abruptly buy an hour and our bodies need to catch up. So, generally speaking, while we do recommend morning sun, I would actually say for the next couple days, do the opposite. Try and get less light during the day, or sorry, during the morning, I should say, and a little bit more light during the evening.

3:19Now, just for a few more days, and then go back to getting light in the morning, because the challenge here is for our bodies to catch up with this quick change that's an hour later. And light in the morning usually helps us stay more on the early side. The other one, avoid bright screens before bed. We've heard that for a long time. And I did switch my phone over tonight mode. Does that make a difference? I certainly think it makes a big difference. A lot of the research also supports that. So, highly encouraged people to continue to do that if they haven't done that already. I just started to try a new green tea. I kind of believe in all these things. But what I didn't count on was how long caffeine can last in your system. Yes. People often are surprised when they learn that caffeine can stay in your system for up to eight hours. So that means if your bedtime is 9 p.m. or 10 p.m.

4:25Your cutoff time is 1 or 2 p.m. Yeah. Well, I'm not a 9 o'clock to bed guy. Even one of you should get up at 4 in the morning and my engineer Brian Morton would go to bed at six at night. I said, if I go to bed at six at night, what's the point? I mean, where's my life? So anyway, I go to bed too late. So I got to cut off the caffeine earlier. And the other thing that's difficult is to stick to a routine. They always say stick to a routine. Get up at the same time on the weekend that you get up during the week. That's difficult too. Yes. Yeah. That is a well-known phenomenon called social jet lag. So instead of normal jet lag where you travel across time zone, social jet lag refers to on the weekends when we stay out late and we spend time with friends and family and our sleep gets later and later. Almost as if we traveled across time zones, except we didn't. It's just our biology is drifting or biological clock is drifting.

5:33And as bedtime approaches lower the lights in your home, avoid stimulating activities. Read a book, which I sometimes when I'm lying in bed and can't sleep, get up and do. Take a warm shower. You can meditate, which can help signal your body to wind down any other quick ideas. Yeah, I would say exactly what you said when you are unable to sleep to go ahead and get out of bed with a caveat that that doesn't mean you should go and do fine or productive things like, you know, do the dishes or do laundry. You know, you don't want to accidentally reinforce that nighttime awakenings are great time to be productive and maybe you should do more of it. So when you are unable to sleep and it happens bad nights happen to good people, if you believe it or not, and get out of bed, find a dim cozy place to be at and pass the time with something that is mildly entertaining.

6:41So shows, reruns of shows, for example, you know, Seinfeld for those of us who grew up with Seinfeld, if it's on a television, it's generally not a problem. If it's on a laptop that's close to your eyes, that's a little bit more of a concern to try and do, if you're going to do a screen, that's sort of far away like a television. Or puzzles, your favorite book that you've read, something that's easy to put down when you eventually are sleepy again. Philip Chang who has his PhD and is an expert sleep researcher with Henry Ford Health. Thanks for your help. Philip, we appreciate it. We'll talk again. Fantastic. Thanks for having me to care. It is our pleasure. I like to watch a television show if I can see the beginning, middle and end. I don't know why that is. And don't do what I was thinking of doing last night, which was finding a Jersey mics at two o'clock in the morning, as we continue on WJR.