Here's Fred Turek's advice: 'I take more trips to the southern part of the U.S. The farther north you live, the darker your days will be in the winter. Go south - or closer to the equator - if you can. Group exercise classes are also effective at combating the winter blues. Hafeez's advice: Join a book club or find people with a shared hobby. Bright lights or light boxes can help people who have seasonal affective disorder.Īnother approach is to try to stay socially engaged. And some people develop seasonal depression. 'Some people tend to hibernate,' Hafeez says. There's plenty of evidence that drinking more than a serving or two per day is not healthy. So here's one approach: Make lunch your main meal, and take a small-plate, tapas approach to dinner. Shots - Health News A New Prescription For Depression: Join A Team And Get Sweaty 'The in daylight can throw off a lot of things including socialization and emotional rhythm,' says Sanam Hafeez, an adjunct assistant professor of psychology at Columbia University.

Research also shows that kids who don't have set bedtimes and mealtimes are also more likely to become overweight.Īt this time of year, as the amount of daylight continues to decrease, it's easy to fall into bad habits. For instance, people who work overnight shifts are at higher risk of developing diabetes and obesity. When we disrupt our routines with erratic sleep or eating habits, it can increase the risk of metabolic disease. And increasingly, there's evidence that when our habits - such as when we eat and sleep - are out of sync with our internal clocks, it can harm us.Īs we've reported, our bodies crave consistent routines. These clocks help regulate important functions such as sleep and metabolism. Over the last 20 years, scientists have documented that, in addition to the master clock in our brains, every cell in our body has a time-keeping mechanism. These studies are a reminder of just how sensitive we are to time and rhythm. This finding is preliminary, but it adds to the evidence that daylight saving time transitions can have negative health consequences. 'It is definitely a surprise when thinking about a one-hour difference,' says Jay Chudow, an internal medicine resident at Montefiore Health System who did the research. Scientists have documented that the shift to daylight saving time in the spring, when we lose an hour of sleep, is linked to an increased risk of heart attacks and traffic accidents.Īnd the results of a new study, which will be presented at an American Heart Association conference later this week, points to an increase in the number of patients admitted to the hospital for a atrial fibrillation, which is a type of irregular heartbeat, in the days following the spring time change. 'The internal clock has to catch up, and it takes a day or two to adjust to the new time,' Turek says. So, if daylight comes an hour earlier - as it will for many of us this weekend - it throws us off. It's synchronized to the 24 hour light/dark cycle.ĭaylight is a primary cue to reset the body's clock each day. 'But it turns out that the master clock in our brain is pretty hard-wired, ' Turek explains. 'You might not think that a one hour change is a lot,' says Fred Turek, who directs the Center for Sleep & Circadian Biology at Northwestern University. And this means that the time shift in the fall and again in the spring can influence our health in unexpected ways. Our smartphones automatically adjust.īut our internal clocks aren't as easy to re-program. When it comes to turning back the clocks on our devices, technology has us covered.

Time for change