Reader Report: There are ways to reduce daylight savings time risks

The days are about to get gloriously longer, the nights shorter and the weather even more perfect than it has been.

But there is a dark side to all this daylight: Fatal car crashes increase by as much as 17% on the Monday immediately following the transition to daylight saving time (DST).

Losing that hour of sleep causes enough of a disruption to our collective circadian rhythm that DST has become a major public health issue. Everyone from car insurance companies to emergency room physicians issue warnings this time of year to drive defensively and be prepared for the worse.

But I have a different recommendation: Go to bed.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine: “Major disasters, including the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger, have been linked to insufficient sleep, disrupted circadian rhythms, or both on the part of involved supervisors and staff.”

On the road, insufficient sleep translates to more fender benders, injuries and fatalities. Pedestrians out at dusk are nearly three times as likely to be killed in a car accident.

There are two basic states of sleep: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep – where intense dreaming occurs – and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, which consists of three stages. The first stage of NREM sleep is often called “light sleep,” while the last two stages are “deep sleep,” during which the body repairs and regenerates tissue, builds bone and muscle, and strengthens the immune system.

Our brains need to cycle between non-REM and REM sleep several times a night in order to get the most out of sleep. That is why we don’t feel “rested” if we haven’t slept enough.

We can blame the time change, but the clock isn’t the culprit. We tend to “celebrate” DST as an unofficial holiday by staying out a little later than we should and consuming a little more alcohol than we should. In fact, there is traditionally a spike in early Sunday morning traffic accidents as people drive after an extra late night of partying.

While politicians debate the need for our bi-yearly time change, we can minimize the dangers of DST by remembering a few sleep hygiene tips:

• Turn off all electronics an hour before bedtime. Light from TVs and computers suppress melatonin and affect the quality of your sleep.

• Reserve your bed for romance and sleep only. Don’t check your email, watch TV or even read in bed.

• Keep your room cool at night; a lower temperature helps induce sleep.

• Most importantly, do as your parents told you when you were young: Go. To. Sleep.

Adults between the ages of 18 to 64 need an average of 7 to 9 hours of sleep, but too few of us get anywhere close to that range. Getting to bed at roughly the same time every night will help maintain a sleep schedule and allow you to earn those much-needed “Zzz’s.”

Sleep is a vital part of your health regimen. Skimping on sleep should be seen as the equivalent of breaking your diet or skipping your workout — not something you can do often without seeing real repercussions. Unfortunately with sleep, those repercussions include fatal car accidents.

So as we prepare to move our clock forward an hour, I wish you all a happy daylight saving time. And a very, very good night.

JAY PUANGCO is service chief of the Judy & Richard Voltmer Sleep Center in Newport Beach.