Coloradans springing ahead Sunday with one more hour of evening daylight could be lurching into sleep problems, lower school test scores, greater risk of heart attack, elevated ER visits and traffic accidents associated with the lost hour of time, medical experts say.
“We have tons of evidence showing even small differences in sleep make a lot of difference in behavior,” said National Jewish Health sleep expert Lisa Meltzer.
Students who suffer even small amounts of sleep deprivation have trouble focusing on their work, and research shows them testing a grade below their well-rested level, Meltzer said.
The pediatric sleep psychologist said it’s particularly alarming that immediately following this temporal dislocation of daylight saving time, , grades three through high school, on their mastery of state academic content standards.
“It would be easy to change when we give these assessment tests,” Meltzer said. “It would make a real difference in performance.”
Daylight saving time, adopted by 70 countries mostly to save energy costs, involves a twice-yearly one-hour change in clock time that growing numbers of medical studies show takes a human toll.
The presumed ease of adjustment in terms of sleep patterns is a wrong presumption — even when we “fall back” in the autumn and “gain” an hour on the clock, according to a , which cited increased rates of traffic accidents.
Heart attacks increased by 25 percent in hospitals on the Monday immediately after the daylight saving time change in spring 2010-2013, according to a .
However, Sandhu reported a 21 percent drop in heart attack patient numbers the Monday after clocks were turned back an hour in the fall.
Electa Draper: 303-954-1276, edraper@denverpost.com or twitter.com/electadraper
