CHICAGO, April 6 (UPI) -- Sleep experts have this advice for the annual switch from standard to daylight-saving time on Sunday morning -- "sleep in."
"Spring Forward, Fall Back," may be the twice a year watchwords, but James S. Ferraro, an associate professor of physiology at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale says losing just one hour of shuteye has an impact on our "biological clocks."
Most of the nation switches to daylight time at 2 a.m. April 7. Ferraro says unfortunately studies show circadian rhythms -- the internal clock that regulates sleep of most organisms -- don't run on a 24-hour cycle.
"It's more like 25 hours," said Ferraro, who has conducted research on the effect of light on circadian cycles. He said people feel the difference if they stay up late on Friday and Saturday nights and get up later on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
"If we go to bed an hour later than normal on those nights, we're looking at a two-hour difference come Monday morning, hence the term, 'Monday Blahs.' Most of the time, it's not a big deal and we recover fairly quickly," he said. But the lost hour factor is compounded with the switch to daylight-savings time.
"It's not a matter of losing sleep, it's a matter of adjusting the body's internal clock," Ferraro said. "It generally takes three or four days to get us back to normal."
Ferraro said without clocks and social cues human beings probably would rise later each day and eat daily meals on a different cycle. He said while sleeping in on Sunday morning can't hurt, that it will take time for most people to get back on track.
Sleeping in sounds good to the National Sleep Foundation, too.
The foundation's 2002 Sleep in America poll found nearly a quarter of adults, 47 million Americans, believe they are sleep deprived. Twenty-four percent said they don't get the minimum amount of sleep they need to be alert the next day, and 37 percent said they were so sleepy during the day that it interfered with normal activities. Sixteen percent said they got sleepy during the day at least a few days a week.
"People in this army of the walking tired are more likely to sit and seethe in traffic jams, quarrel with other people, or overeat, according to the findings," said Dr. Michael Katzoff, medical director at St. Luke's Medical Center in Aurora, Ill.
While lack of sleep makes us less alert and more irritable, it also makes people more accident-prone. Sleep deprivation also has been linked to hormonal and metabolic changes.
Katzoff, a sleep expert, said the public understands the connection between sleep, behavior and quality of life, "yet about one quarter of adults in this country fail to meet their own minimum sleep needs at night to be fully alert the next day."
Experts recommend grade school age children get about 10 hours of sleep a night, and teenagers about nine hours. But the National Sleep Foundation estimates only 15 percent of children get the recommended amount of sleep.
"Studies show that sleep reduces stress-hormone levels and allows our bodies to release growth hormones," said Dr. Kimberly Zoberi, a doctor at Des Peres Medical Arts Pavilion at St. Louis University. "Sleep also has an important role in regulating the immune system. Children who don't get enough sleep are more susceptible to colds and other illnesses."
National Sleep Awareness Week ends Sunday.
More information about sleep disorders is available on the foundation's Web site, sleepfoundation.org.
