It’s
the gift that comes once a year—an extra
hour of precious sleep.
You’ll
hear few complaints when that biannual agrarian ritual known as daylight
savings time comes to a close at 2 a.m., Sunday, November 1.
But
if you are truly looking to wake up refreshed with more energy to face the day,
you might want to rethink spending that extra hour in bed once the sun comes
up.
"There
is a clock in your brain. That clock keeps
your internal environment in sync with your eternal environment, and the most
important signal for that clock is the light," says Carol Ash, D.O.,
Director of Sleep Medicine for Meridian Health. “That internal clock isn't
flexible enough to adjust quickly to the time jump,”
she said.
If
you truly want to maximize the benefits of that extra hour, the tried and true
rules of healthy sleep still apply: Go to bed at a reasonable hour, get the
best sleep you can, and get up when the sun comes up.
When
it comes to "resetting" that internal clock, Dr. Ash recommends
natural, cost effective alternatives to over-the-counter sleep medications,
which she calls "short term solutions to recurring problems."
One
potential remedy Dr. Ash lists is mindful breathing, an elegant solution for
alleviating stress and achieving deep rest.
Dr.
Ash adds that by making just a few changes to adapt the right sleep habits, you
can create the feeling of having an extra hour not just once a year—but every day.
On
November 7 at The
Oyster Point Hotel in Red Bank, Dr. Ash and a team of Meridian Health
experts will present “The Power of an Hour,” a morning devoted to helping you
sleep better, eat better, stress less, and develop lifelong habits to create a
healthier, better-rested you!
