![\"Jennifer](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/kanaan_lg-207x300.jpg\")
\u201cA good first step is to take advantage of the extra hour to start going to bed earlier,\u201d says Dr. Jennifer Kanaan<\/a>, pulmonologist in the UConn Health Sleep Disorders Center<\/a>. \u201cWe don\u2019t do a great job with scheduling a night of restful sleep, even though I would argue that\u2019s more important than many of the things we do schedule in our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n Simply put, our bodies are biologically programmed to sleep when it\u2019s dark and be awake when it\u2019s light. In the Northeast, the return to standard time works in our favor to help us make bed time earlier, and keep it earlier for several months.<\/p>\n \u201cFor most people with a first day-shift job or school or somewhere to be in the morning, going to bed earlier is the only practical way to add hours of sleep to their schedule,\u201d says Dr. Adrian Salmon<\/a>, another sleep medicine specialist at UConn Health. \u201cWe recommend taking the extra hour of sleep this weekend, certainly, but not stopping there. Use it as a chance to start a consistent routine of an earlier bedtime.\u201d<\/p>\n While we can use the tie-in to daylight and darkness to our advantage, we easily can undo that advantage with exposure to blue wavelength light. That includes fluorescent lighting, LED lighting, and all kinds of screens, including those often omnipresent smartphones.<\/p>\n The blue light interferes with the environmental cues that tell our body to produce melatonin after dusk, and it\u2019s the melatonin that helps us fall asleep and stay asleep.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s why you always hear us recommend powering down and putting the screens away at least an hour before bedtime,\u201d Salmon says. \u201cReading a book by a relatively dim incandescent bulb, which gives off much less blue light, won\u2019t interfere with melatonin production nearly as much. Plus, unlike social media,\u00a0,checking work emails, or watching your favorite late-night TV show, it\u2019s much less likely to wind you up when you\u2019re trying to wind down.\u201d<\/p>\n Science is gradually coming around on the notion that sleep-deprived kids don\u2019t do as well in school and are more accident-prone. Sleep-deprived kids can be misdiagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Add to that the natural phenomenon of sleep phase shift, which causes most teenagers to want to sleep from midnight to noon, and it becomes hard to argue with establishing good sleep habits in childhood.<\/p>\n \u201cAs long as we have school schedules that don\u2019t take into account the adolescent biological clocks, the only way to get our kids to school in optimal condition to learn and excel is to get them to bed earlier,\u201d says Kanaan, who specializes in child and adolescent sleep disorders. \u201cDoing that requires a culture shift in the home that starts with the parents. We should be embracing sleep, and understanding its connection to our children \u2013 really, all of us \u2013 reaching their full potential.\u201d<\/p>\n 12 Good Habits for Sleep All Year Round<\/strong><\/p>\n Learn more about the Sleep Disorders Center at UConn Health<\/em><\/a>, or call <\/em>860-679-8300<\/em><\/a> for an appointment.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s the most wonderful time of the year for our body clocks, UConn sleep experts explain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":156053,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1868],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2010],"class_list":["post-156054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meds"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-26 00:15:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156054"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156058,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156054\/revisions\/156058"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/156053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156054"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=156054"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=156054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Dr.](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Salmon.jpg\")
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