Tips to Adjust to Daylight Saving Time

Daylight savings time means losing an hour of precious sleep this weekend.

But Emory University sleep expert sleep expert offers this advice to adjusting to Daylight Saving Time:

• Keep a consistent schedule, arising at your usual time and going to bed at your usual time.  If you're tired, going to bed a few minutes earlier on Saturday night could be helpful. 
• Be cautious driving to work on Monday morning.  Studies have shown that traffic accidents and fatalities spike on the Monday following the time change. Work place injuries also increase.
• Light is the principal environmental cue for sleep and wakefulness, so expose yourself and your family to bright light, outdoors, on Saturday and Sunday.  Exposure to natural light when you first get up in the morning is one of the most powerful ways to increase alertness and re-set your circadian clock. 
• Keep children on their usual schedule for sleeping, meals and naps.
• Make sure everyone in the household, both parents and children, are getting enough sleep year round.

Remember to set your clocks one hour ahead at 2 a.m. Sunday morning for daylight-saving time.

Although we lose an hour of sleep this weekend, we gain an extra hour of sunlight for the spring and summer months.

Clocks change back to standard time Nov. 4.

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