5 Tips For Getting Through the ‘Daylight Savings Time’ Struggle
Every year I am surprised by how badly springing ahead for Daylight Savings Time messes me up. Losing just one simple hour of sleep has me dragging for days, and I don't even want to talk about the havoc the extra hour of daylight reaps on my kids' sleep schedule, but alas, it is something we all have to deal with.
Until politicians decide to do away with Daylight Savings Time, I think we could all benefit from some tips to make the transition period a little easier. Let's start with these 5 transition tips I found from Cone Health:
- Ease into earlier bedtimes and waking times. Preparing your sleep schedule should have technically started last week, but adjusting your sleep and waking up schedules to 15 minutes earlier each day may still help until your body gets adjusted.
- Get exposure to daylight as soon as possible. As soon as you can after waking up, step into the sunshine to help your body wake up.
- Avoid drinking caffeine too close to bedtime. This a good rule of thumb to follow all year long, but it's more important during the Daylight Savings Time transition.
- After eating, allow 2-3 hours to go by before you go to bed.
- Turn off all screens at least 30 minutes before you go to sleep.
If these next few days find you longing even more to take a nap, health and sleep experts say you should totally take one, but you need to limit it to 20 minutes of shut-eye, anything more than that will do more harm than good.
Lastly, if anyone has some good advice on how to convince your kids to go to bed even though it's still light out, that won't end in a crying jag, I sure would love to hear it!