{"id":56087,"date":"2012-03-07T08:27:09","date_gmt":"2012-03-07T13:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=56087"},"modified":"2012-03-12T08:32:10","modified_gmt":"2012-03-12T12:32:10","slug":"change-your-clocks-change-your-sleep-habits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2012\/03\/change-your-clocks-change-your-sleep-habits\/","title":{"rendered":"Change Your Clocks, Change Your Sleep Habits"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daylight saving time is a good reminder of something most of us already know but are unwilling to admit: We need more sleep.<\/p>\n

While the extra hour of daylight can help us feel better about the lost hour of sleep, a longer day and shorter night can work against our daily performance and our health.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just sleep doctors who preach better sleep habits. Count \u201cgetting at least seven hours of sleep a night\u201d among the top recommendations from doctors responding to a recent Everyday Health survey about physician-prescribed new year\u2019s resolutions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Dr.<\/a>
Dr. Daniel McNally, medical director of the Sleep Disorders Center<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIf there was a way to test everybody on a given day, we would find many of them to be sleepy to some degree,\u201d says Dr. Daniel McNally, medical director of the Sleep Disorders Center<\/a> at the UConn Health Center. \u201cThink about it. If many of us are sleepy, that means we are not functioning at our highest level. We\u2019re not doing our jobs as well as we can. Kids aren\u2019t performing in school as well as they can. In more severe cases, safety can be jeopardized when this impacts things like driving on our highways. And we know that many chronic health problems when we get older can be traced back to poor sleep habits and years of inadequate sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no shortage of research linking sleep deprivation to obesity, heart disease, and cancer.<\/p>\n

Meantime, the ever-growing prevalence of \u201csmart devices\u201d isn\u2019t helping us make sleep a higher priority.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe live in an age where we have immediate access to information, and many of us feel as though we need to constantly stay \u2018connected,\u2019\u201d McNally says. \u201cBut if we\u2019re choosing smartphones, social media, television and the Internet over sleep, it\u2019s hard not to wonder, what good is all this instant information to us? If our brains aren\u2019t rested, how much of this data are we actually absorbing, retaining, and using?\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here are some tips for better sleep to keep in mind as we spring ahead:<\/p>\n