03/18/2020
Do you look like this at your first morning meeting, now that Covid-19 is here? =Anyone sleeping later, now that they don’t need to commute to the office. =Work-shift (see below)
Francie’s Focus, as Covid-19 shift’s daily life
When your biological clock is disrupted, unexpected things also change. Remember feeling Jet Lag, Quick changes, like a new work shift, can contribute to a host of issues, such as weight gain or heart problems or even depression.
A Swedish article in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that the risks of having a heart attack significantly jump in the days following daylight saving time. That’s just a one hour shift….
A Harvard Medical School experiment had health adults spend 5 weeks living in a lab, for a carefully controlled study. Week 1 – Sleep habits were kept at an optimal level. Weeks 2-4 – Sleep was greatly disrupted= only 5.6 hours in bed, simulating real-life events like traveling and work-shifts. Week 5 – Sleep was intentionally returned to normal. Results – “During the 3-week disruption, the participants’ glucose controls went haywire… this magnitude of disruption…could easily set the stage for development of diabetes and obesity…”
Best practice is to keep your bedtime and wake up time the same every day. Use your new found time, for something you really want to do.
Comment with how you will be spending your new time.
1. Shifts to and from Daylight Saving Time and Incidence of Myocardial Infarction https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc0807104
2. Adverse Metabolic Consequences in Humans of Prolonged Sleep Restriction Combined with Circadian Disruption
Science Translational Medicine 11 Apr 2012:
Vol. 4, Issue 129, pp. 129ra43
DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3003200 https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/4/129/129ra43.full