Daylight Savings Time is coming, start preparing your body for time change

Sleeping woman
Photo: Andrea Piacquadio/PEXELS

Family Features - Millions of Americans will soon get extra sunlight in the evenings when daylight saving time (DST) - observed by every state except Arizona and Hawaii - begins on the second Sunday in March and clocks are set ahead by one hour at 2 a.m.

While the extra daylight is a welcome change for most, failing to prepare for DST can have consequences. In fact, research from the Sleep Foundation has found a lack of sleep caused by the time change can affect thinking, decision-making and productivity. The change can alter your circadian rhythm, the body's internal clock that helps control sleep and other biological processes, which may cause mood fluctuations, and the transition has been associated with short-term risk of heart attack, stroke and traffic accidents.

However, making small adjustments ahead of DST can help reduce its impact on your sleep and minimize negative effects. Consider these tips to help navigate the time change.

Reset Your Internal Clock
As you get ready to "spring forward," gradually adjust your sleep schedule throughout the week leading up to the time change, which can help prevent unnecessary shock to your system. The American Academy of Sleep recommends going to bed 15-20 minutes earlier each day than normal, and other daily activities like mealtimes and exercise can also be moved up slightly to help acclimate to the change. Awakening earlier and getting extra light exposure in the morning can also help adjust your circadian rhythm.

Upgrade Your Sleep Environment
Creating a bedroom environment that is conducive to sleep can help ensure you get a good night's rest, which is especially important leading up to the time change when you effectively lose an hour of sleep. Start optimizing your sleep space comfort by choosing a supportive mattress and comfortable bedding then block out unwanted light with blackout curtains and dampen unwanted noises using a fan or soothing white noise machine.

To help regulate temperature, set the thermostat to 60-70 F - a cooler thermostat setting helps maintain a lower core temperature - then adjust if too hot or too cold by adding or removing blankets or changing your pajamas. Lavender essential oils, or another fragrance like peppermint or heliotropin, can also help improve relaxation and sleep quality.

Avoid Screens Before Bed
In the days leading up to DST, experts recommend turning off electronics, including televisions, computers, smartphones and tablets, at least 1 hour before bedtime as the blue light from screens can suppress production of melatonin, the substance that signals the body it's time for bed. If necessary, cut back on screentime in smaller increments leading up to the time change or swap evening screen usage for other activities like crossword puzzles, meditation or reading a book.

Phase Out Caffeine in the Evenings
While avoiding caffeine later in the day can help you fall asleep easier at night, experts suggest limiting and slowly reducing your caffeine intake in the days prior to DST. Choosing half-caffeinated coffee, mixing regular and decaf or cutting out 1-2 caffeinated drinks during the week can help sleep patterns ahead of the change. However, be wary that giving up caffeine "cold turkey" can sometimes lead to headaches.

Find more tips for healthy living all year at eLivingtoday.com.


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I woke up in a strange bedroom with 24 electrodes glued all over my body and a plastic mask attached to a hose covering my face.

The lab technician who watched me all night via video feed told me that I had “wicked sleep apnea” and that it was “central sleep apnea” — a type that originates in the brain and fails to tell the muscles to inhale.


Many so-called night people feel that, when it comes to society’s expectations about when the workday should start, they drew the short straw.

Research shows that “night owls” are hard-wired to sleep later, yet 9-to-5 work schedules force them to battle their physiology and wake up early. Research also has shown that conventional timetables leave them vulnerable to physical and mental health issues.


The popularity of entertainment app TikTok continues to skyrocket. It has been installed on devices over three billion times worldwide, and has surpassed Google and Facebook as the world’s most popular web domain.

The video sharing app seems to have something for everyone – from makeup trends and relationship advice to comedy sketches and life hacks. In fact, the company’s tagline in TV commercials is even, “TikTok taught me.” While recipes, fashion finds or cleaning hacks found on the app can certainly provide a smile, improve your life or save you time – sometimes the advice from TikTok influencers can fall flat, especially when that advice is medical in nature.


Sundowning; What happens when the sun goes down

by Tim Ditman
OSF Healthcare

Courtney McFarlin, PA
GODFREY - The 2015 horror film “The Visit” gives the Hollywood treatment to sundowning. An impostor grandmother is seen running the halls, scratching the walls and vomiting, terrorizing two children in the home.

A little exaggerated, says Courtney McFarlin, PA, an OSF HealthCare internal medicine provider who specializes in geriatrics. But she says sundowning is an all too real experience for some older adults.

What is sundowning?

McFarlin explains that sundowning is not a medical condition, but rather a way to describe behavior seen at night. It’s triggered by a disruption in your circadian rhythm.

“That’s our body’s natural, 24-hour sleep/wake cycle,” McFarlin says. “It’s regulated by the hypothalamus in the brain. Based on daylight and darkness, it tells our body to be alert during the day. And it helps us settle down in the evening to want to go to sleep.”

Key takeaways:

  • Sundowning describes nighttime behavior in older adults, especially those with dementia, due to a disruption in the circadian rhythm. The person may be agitated, moody, not want to go to sleep or physically aggressive.
  • Ways to help include medicine like melatonin, eliminating long naps and practicing general good sleep hygiene. Homes should also be arranged so the elder does not fall or wander outside.
  • A caregiver may ultimately have to decide whether to move the person to an assisted living facility.
  • Many things can disrupt your circadian rhythm, like illness, stress, artificial light and genetic factors. But McFarlin says sundowning is most often seen in older adults with dementia and similar disorders like Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease. Chronic alcohol use can also bring about sundowning.

    What does sundowning look like? McFarlin says the person may be agitated, have mood changes and pace around. They may not want to go to sleep. And the person may even physically lash out at others.

    “Reports and research have shown that it’s most common when people are in mild or moderate stages [of dementia],” McFarlin says. “You would think as one progresses with dementia, it would get worse. But it actually improves a little bit.”

    How to help

    McFarlin says caregivers of older adults often come to her with a plea: help us do something about my loved one’s nighttime behavior. The caregivers are sometimes awake through the night keeping an eye on things, leading to sluggishness, crankiness and other issues during their workday.

    First, McFarlin reminds you that support groups exist – if not in-person in your community, then online – for caregivers of older adults. But for medicinal aids, McFarlin says melatonin is a good first option.

    “It’s a natural hormone that our body produces that helps aid in sleep,” she says.

    McFarlin adds that studies have found decreased levels of melatonin in older adults with or without dementia.

    Serotonin-based medications, hypnotics and anti-anxiety medications can also help. Paxil, Prozac, Seroquel, Risperdal and Haldol are common brand names. Talk to your health care provider or a sleep specialist if you have questions about these medicines.

    Something to strike from your loved one’s routine: long naps.

    “It’s suggested that a less than three-hour naptime schedule is advised,” McFarlin says. “If I find my patients are napping quite a bit, I’ll encourage them to take less naps.”

    Other sleep hygiene tips:

  • Make your home’s lighting natural: bright during the day, darker as night approaches and dark at night.
  • Make the bed the place to sleep. Do other activities like looking at screens in another room, and don’t look at screens right before bedtime.
  • Get into a routine by going to sleep and waking up at around the same time each day. And make the sleep and wake times normal, as if the older adult was going to work. Waking up mid-morning each day, while a routine, isn’t the best idea.
  • Avoid large meals, caffeine and alcohol before bed. McFarlin says lunch should be the biggest meal.
  • Stay busy during the day so you feel tired at night. Regular exercise can help with this.
  • If you are a light sleeper, use an artificial noise machine.
  • Since people with sundowning behaviors can pace and wander, make sure your home is trip-proof and escape-proof. Rugs, chairs and nightstands should be moved or removed. McFarlin says providers can also recommend physical therapy or devices like a walker, wheelchair or bed alarm.

    “[People can] actually unlock the door and wander outside in the middle of the night,” McFarlin warns. “So, make sure the door is properly locked. If the adult is someone who wanders at night, make sure they don’t have the ability to leave home.”

    Ultimately, you may have to decide whether a different living arrangement is best for your loved one.

    “That could be remaining at home and more family coming in. Because that’s our first choice – to leave the person at home as long as they can,” McFarlin says.

    “But when it becomes unsafe for the person or exhausting the caregiver, it’s my responsibility to engage other options,” like an assisted living facility, she says.


    Clinical trial for people who can't sleep with CPAP in progress

    Photo: Quin Stevenson/Unsplash
    BPT - If you are one of the more than 35 million Americans who are estimated to have obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), you already know how disruptive it can be to your life. While OSA is one of the most common and serious sleep disorders, the condition is widely under-diagnosed, so the number of affected Americans may be far greater.

    What is obstructive sleep apnea?

    OSA occurs when the muscles in the throat relax during sleep, blocking normal breathing. This can lead to low levels of oxygen in your blood while you sleep and result in poor sleep, fatigue and sleepiness that can negatively impact quality of life for many. In the long term, OSA has also been shown to contribute to high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and stroke.

    Most people diagnosed with OSA are prescribed positive air pressure therapy devices such as continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, which can work very well in helping people receive the oxygen they need while they are sleeping. However, because many have difficulty using or tolerating these devices, a significant percentage of the population with OSA remains untreated, undertreated and at risk.

    A new option for treating obstructive sleep apnea

    Apnimed is a pharmaceutical company working to change the way OSA is treated. The company recently completed a large Phase 2b clinical trial, called MARIPOSA, to study AD109 (an investigational medication which is a single pill taken at bedtime) as a possible treatment for obstructive sleep apnea.

    AD109 has the potential to be the first oral medication that treats both the underlying cause of OSA - airway obstruction at night - and improve the daytime symptoms of OSA, such as fatigue. It is designed to treat people with OSA from mild to severe.

    Many patients with OSA are unable to adequately treat their condition with existing options, and the team at Apnimed is driven to find new solutions for patients and their doctors to overcome these barriers to treatment. The success of this effort is largely dependent on the dedicated work done by patients and doctors in the community who take part in clinical research.

    "MARIPOSA results showed that AD109 improved daytime fatigue, which is an often debilitating effect of poor sleep due to OSA," said Paula Schweitzer, Ph.D., an investigator in the MARIPOSA trial and director of research at St. Luke's Sleep Medicine and Research Center, Chesterfield, Missouri. "For those who cannot tolerate current treatments, AD109 has the potential to be a convenient oral pill that could improve people's quality of life at night and during the daytime as well."

    Learn about enrolling in the clinical trial

    With the promising results from the MARIPOSA study, a new study is now available for people with OSA.

    If you or a loved one has obstructive sleep apnea and you are unable to successfully use or tolerate treatment with a CPAP machine, you could be eligible to enroll in a six-month clinical trial called SynAIRgy.

    To learn more about the clinical trial and to enroll, visit: www.SynAIRgyStudy.com.


    Illinois adults aren't getting enough sleep


    During the pandemic sleep quality decreased and bedtime routines became less structured.
    by Mark Richardson
    Illinois News Connection
    Illinois - More than three in 10 Illinois adults reported getting too few hours of sleep a night, which can contribute to poor job performance and health problems, according to America's Health Rankings.

    Sleep experts say people ages 18 to 60 need between seven and nine hours of sleep per night to be healthy. Losing sleep has been linked to increasing rates of Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity.

    Dr. Ravi Johar, chief medical officer for United Healthcare, explained developing a consistent bedtime routine is critical for a good night's rest.

    "That's something that's really important, just having a routine," Johar outlined. "Whether it's brushing your teeth, changing into pajamas. Doing some kind of activity before you go to sleep; yoga, listening to music, reading. Setting your alarm for the same time every day."

    Statistics show 31% of Illinois adults get less than seven hours of sleep a night, just under the national average of 32%. There are also differences in race and gender. Among Black Illinois residents, 47% get too little sleep, compared to about 27% of white and Hispanic residents. Women get about 5% more sleep than men.

    Johar emphasized it is also important to turn off laptops and phones a few hours before bed, because the blue light from screens suppresses the release of melatonin, which induces restful sleep. He also pointed out eating right before bed can trigger a cascade of events to throw off circadian rhythm and metabolism.

    "Avoid eating large meals before bedtime," Johar advised. "Those can cause a lot of restless sleep and problems."

    Johar added people experiencing prolonged issues with sleep need to see their doctor.

    "Sometimes, there may be underlying medical problems that are making it difficult for you to sleep," Johar noted. "And the other thing that's really important that people don't realize is how much stress and behavioral health issues can factor into their sleep."

    During the pandemic, while more people reported sleeping longer, sleep quality decreased and bedtime routines became less structured.


    Reporter panics at diagnosis, then discovers simple, no-cost solution

    Photo: Shane/Unsplash
    Sleeping on your back contributes to snoring and blockages, especially as you age and the muscles in the throat become looser. Sleeping on your side could help improve your sleep quality.

    by Jay Hancock
    Kaiser Health News

    I woke up in a strange bedroom with 24 electrodes glued all over my body and a plastic mask attached to a hose covering my face.

    The lab technician who watched me all night via video feed told me that I had “wicked sleep apnea” and that it was “central sleep apnea” — a type that originates in the brain and fails to tell the muscles to inhale.

    As a journalist — and one terrified by the diagnosis — I set out to do my own research. After a few weeks of sleuthing and interviewing experts, I reached two important conclusions.

    First, I had moderate apnea, if that, and it could be treated without the elaborate machines, mouthpieces, or other devices that specialists who had consulted on my care were talking about.

    Second, the American health care system has joined with commercial partners to define a medical condition — in this case, sleep apnea — in a way that allows both parties to generate revenue from a multitude of pricey diagnostic studies, equipment sales, and questionable treatments. I was on a conveyor belt.


    As a journalist who spent years covering the business of health care, I found there was more motivating my expensive testing cascade than concerns about my health.

    It all began with a desire for answers: I had been feeling drowsy during the day, and my wife told me I snored. Both can mean obstructive sleep apnea. With obstructive sleep apnea, the mouth and throat relax when a person is unconscious, sometimes blocking or narrowing the airway. That interrupts breathing, as well as sleep. Without treatment, the resulting disruption in oxygen flow might increase the risk of developing certain cardiovascular diseases.

    So I contacted a sleep-treatment center, and doctors gave me an at-home test ($365). Two weeks later, they told me I had “high-moderate” sleep apnea and needed to acquire a continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, machine, at a cost of about $600.

    Though I had hoped to get the equipment and adjust the settings to see what worked best, my doctors said I had to come to the sleep lab for an overnight test ($1,900) to have them “titrate” the optimal CPAP air pressure.

    “How do you treat central sleep apnea?” I worriedly asked the technician after that first overnight stay. She said something about an ASV (adaptive servo-ventilation) machine ($4,000). And one pricey lab sleepover wasn’t enough, she said. I needed to come back for another.

    (Most procedures and devices mentioned in this article were covered or would have been covered by insurance — in my case, Medicare, plus a supplemental plan. Unnecessary care is a big reason Americans’ insurance costs — premiums, copays, and deductibles — tend to rise year after year.)

    As a journalist who spent years covering the business of health care, I found there was more motivating my expensive testing cascade than concerns about my health.

    The American Academy of Sleep Medicine, or AASM, a nonprofit based near Chicago, decides what is sleep apnea and how to treat it. Working with sleep societies around the world, it publishes the International Classification of Sleep Disorders, relied on by doctors everywhere to diagnose and categorize disease.

    But behind that effort lie considerable conflicts of interest. Like so much of U.S. health care, sleep medicine turns out to be a thriving industry. AASM finances its operations in part with payments from CPAP machine manufacturers and other companies that stand to profit from expensive treatments and expansive definitions of apnea and other sleep disorders.

    Zoll Itamar, which makes the at-home testing device I used, as well as implantable nerve-stimulation hardware for central sleep apnea, is a $60,000, “platinum” partner in AASM’s Industry Engagement Program. So is Avadel Pharmaceuticals, which is testing a drug to treat narcolepsy, characterized by intense daytime sleepiness.


    Almost everybody breathes irregularly sometime at night, especially during REM sleep, characterized by rapid eye movement and dreams.

    Other sponsors include the maker of an anti-insomnia drug; another company with a narcolepsy drug; Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, which makes CPAP machines and masks; and Inspire Medical Systems, maker of a heavily advertised surgical implant, costing tens of thousands of dollars, to treat apnea.

    Corporate sponsors for Sleep 2022, a convention AASM put on in Charlotte, North Carolina, with other professional societies, included many of those companies, plus Philips Respironics and ResMed, two of the biggest CPAP machine makers.

    In a statement, AASM spokesperson Jennifer Gibson said a conflict-of-interest policy and a non-interference pledge from industry funders protect the integrity of the academy’s work. Industry donations account for about $170,000 of AASM’s annual revenue of about $15 million, she said. Other revenue comes from educational materials and membership and accreditation fees.

    Here’s what else I found. Almost everybody breathes irregularly sometime at night, especially during REM sleep, characterized by rapid eye movement and dreams. Blood oxygen levels also fluctuate slightly.

    But recent European studies have shown that standards under the International Classification of Sleep Disorders would doom huge portions of the general population to a sleep apnea diagnosis — whether or not people had complaints of daytime tiredness or other sleep problems.

    A study in the Swiss city of Lausanne showed that 50% of local men and 23% of the women 40 or older were positive for sleep apnea under such criteria.

    Such rates of disease are “extraordinarily high,” “astronomical,” and “implausible,” Dr. Dirk Pevernagie, a scientist at Belgium’s Ghent University Hospital, wrote with colleagues two years ago in a comprehensive study in the Journal of Sleep Research.

    “Right now, there is no real evidence for the criteria that have been put forward to diagnose obstructive sleep apnea and rate its severity,” he said in an interview.

    Likewise, 19% of middle-aged subjects in a 2016 Icelandic study appeared to have moderate to severe “apnea” under one definition in the International Classification of Sleep Disorders even though many reported no drowsiness.

    “Most of them were really surprised,” said Erna Sif Arnardóttir, who led the study and is running a large European program to refine detection and treatment of apnea.

    Nevertheless, the official AASM journal recommends extremely broad screening for sleep apnea, looking for patients who have what it defines as illness. Everybody 18 and older should be screened every year for apnea if they have diabetes, obesity, untreated high blood pressure, or heart disease — even if they have never complained about sleep problems, the group says.

    AASM “continually evaluates the definitions, criteria and recommendations used in the identification of sleep apnea and other sleep disorders,” Gibson said in the statement. Meanwhile, routine screening by primary care doctors “is a simple way” of gauging whether a high-risk patient may have obstructive sleep apnea, the statement said.

    The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an authoritative body that reviews the effectiveness of preventive care, takes a conservative view, more like that of the European researchers, concluding there is “insufficient” evidence to support widespread screening among patients with no symptoms.

    Many insurers refuse to pay for CPAP machines and other treatments prescribed for people at the outer edges of the AASM’s apnea definition. But AASM is pressuring them to come around.

    After all my reporting, I concluded that my apnea is real, though moderate. My alarming reading in the overnight lab — diagnosed quickly as central sleep apnea — was a byproduct of the testing machinery itself. That’s a well-described phenomenon that occurs in 5% to 15% of patients.

    And when I looked closely at the results of my at-home diagnostic test, I had an epiphany: My overall score was 26 breathing interruptions and blood-oxygen level declines, on average, per hour — enough to put me in the “high-moderate” category for apnea. But when I looked at the data sorted according to sleeping positions, I saw that I scored much better when I slept on my side: only 10 interruptions in an hour.

    So I did a little experiment: I bought a $25 pulse oximeter with a smartphone app that records oxygen dips and breathing interruptions. When I slept on my side, there were hardly any.

    Now I sleep on my side. I snore less. I wake up refreshed. I’m not daytime drowsy.

    None of my specialists mentioned turning on to my side — known in medical parlance as “positional therapy” — though the intervention is recognized as effective by many researchers.

    “Positional patients … can sleep in the lateral position and sleep quite well,” said Arie Oksenberg, a sleep researcher formerly at Loewenstein Hospital in Israel.

    But it’s not easy to find this in the official AASM treatment guidelines, which instead go right to the money-making options like CPAP machines, surgery, central apnea, and mouth appliances.

    Dealing with apnea by shifting slightly in bed gets little more than a couple of paragraphs in AASM’s guideline on “other” treatments and a little box on a long and complex decision chart.

    A third or more of patients wear CPAPs only a few hours a night or stop using them. It turns out people don’t like machines in their beds.

    “Positional therapy is an effective treatment option for some patients,” said the AASM’s Gibson. But she said there are concerns about whether patients will sleep on their sides long term and whether trying to stay in one position might cause sleep interruptions itself.

    It’s true that And it often takes practice. (Some people tape a tennis ball to their pajamas to keep them off their backs.) Even conservative sleep doctors say CPAP machines are the best solution for many patients.

    But there is a largely overlooked alternative.

    “Are we missing a simple treatment for most adult sleep apnea patients?” was the name of a 2013 paper that Oksenberg and a colleague wrote about positional therapy.

    In my case, the answer was “yes.”


    Jay Hancock is a former KHN senior correspondent.

    KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

    Subscribe to KHN's free Morning Briefing.


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