Discover Why We’re All Struggling with Springing Forward

Seriously, how is it already 6AM?  Every spring we go through this awful Daylight Saving Time nonsense where we lose an hour of sleep.  It surprised me to know that the US is not the only country in the world to observe DST (it just seemed like some sort of archaic nonsense that only Americans would persist with, but it turns out I was wrong). 

I think we can all agree Falling Backwards is the bomb.  But Springing Forward?  Umm, no, thanks.  It is hard.  But it’s not just hard because we had plans for that extra hour of sleep we didn’t get, but actually our brains struggle with the time change.  It’s the same process that causes jet lag.  Here’s why, from a neurological perspective.

It all begins with the “circadian rhythm,” which is a fancy name for our “biological clock.”  If you have anything resembling a regular schedule, your circadian rhythm is what makes you sleepy at just about the same time every night, makes you feel drowsy in the mid-afternoon, and sometimes makes you wake up just before your alarm goes off in the morning.  But our circadian rhythm doesn’t just control our sleep cycle, it also does lots and lots of other things biologically, like tell your body to change its temperature (our bodies get cooler when we sleep) and send out hormones (including melatonin, which makes us sleepy). 

The part of our brain that controls our circadian rhythm is the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the lateral hypothalamus.  That’s a mouthful, but here’s a picture:

The hypothalamus is a part of the brain that controls the “Four F’s” of survival: fleeing, fighting, feeding, and … reproductive behavior.  The suprachiasmatic nucleus is a tiny part of the hypothalamus that controls the circadian rhythm.  In the picture, you see light shines into our eyes and goes directly to the suprachiasmatic nucleus.  This is how it knows when to make us sleepy and when to wake us up – as we soak up sunlight all day long, our suprachiasmatic nucleus is learning what time it is and helping our bodies stay on track.   

Part of the reason we have so much trouble adjusting to Daylight Saving Time is because our suprachiasmatic nucleus doesn’t have a watch – it just has the sun.  Even though our clock says it’s already 6AM, as far as your suprachiasmatic nucleus is concerned, it’s still 5 and you should still be sleeping.  Same thing with jet lag.  It might be 2 hours earlier in California than it is in Iowa, but your biological clock has no idea where in the world you are and you’re going to get sleepy a couple of hours before the festivities are over.  So be patient with your suprachiasmatic nucleus when the clocks change – it’ll take a day or two for it to figure out that the time shifted somehow.  In the meantime, practice your sleep hygiene techniques.