Surely, the spring time change is the last thing that keeps us awake at the moment. For the first time in history, this time change is going to slip through the back door, making little noise, with millions of schoolchildren, university students and workers in quarantine, confined to a limited space for a time yet to be determined.
The good news is that, thanks to the quarantine, this year the time change will affect us less than on other occasions. To understand the reasons, we must first explain how confinement affects our internal tic tac.
The danger of chaotic schedules
After a few days of quarantine, anxiety due to the fear of contagion and loss of work begins to take its toll on us. Also the deprivation of social contacts, the lack of physical activity and the relaxation of certain work and social obligations, which acted as synchronizers and helped to set our biological clock on time each day.
On the other hand, it is easy for that internal clock to get disorganized during confinement and we end up being carried away by chaos in our schedules. To avoid this, nothing better than knowing and enhancing all the synchronizers (signals) that set our ‘internal hands’ in everyday life.
There are many types of synchronizers. The most important is the alternation of light (natural or artificial) and darkness, which usually coincides with day and night. Sleep and meal times, social contacts or physical activity are also important. Of course, for a synchronizer to be effective ‘putting us on time’ it is necessary that each day be repeated at practically the same time.
And that’s where the problems begin. Because regularity is not easy at all in confinement. During these days, most of us do not have strict work hours (telecommuting) or social, so we have become flexible (too much) with the times to eat or sleep. To make matters worse, being locked up at home we peck continuously, we spend a lot of time sitting and it is more than likely that we lack natural light.
Hence, we have to put special emphasis on strengthening our synchronizers and finding a way to be regular during the isolation period. That starts with choosing a sleep and work schedule that is more in line with our trends or timeline than the schedule imposed by pre-quarantine obligations. And above all, don’t skip it.
The time change will affect us less
Humans are governed by three times: the internal, which we have already talked about (chronotype), the social external (work hours and official time) and the solar external. The ideal situation would be for all three to coincide, but this is not usually the case. In fact, what the time change in spring does is increase the discrepancy between social and solar time by one hour. And that negatively affects both the proper functioning of our internal clocks and the temporal adjustment of our physiological processes. To begin with, because we usually lose sleep time, at least in the first few days.
Where does this time change come from? The first thing to keep in mind is that standard time is what in Spain we call ‘winter’ (although the proper name would be UCT or GMT, from its acronym in English for Universal Coordinated Time or Greenwich Mean Time). During World War I, to save coal, Germany proposed setting clocks forward one hour so that there would be sunlight ‘until later’. Soon after, other countries at war joined the initiative. And in the following decades, practically the entire world implemented this time change, aimed at saving energy.
However, today there seems to be a consensus that these savings are not so significant as to compensate for the health problems that it can cause. In fact, everything indicates that this hour of difference in our schedules entails a social jet-lag that has been related to acute and chronic problems in our health and well-being.
Hence, most chronobiology experts advocate for this time change to be eliminated and standard time to be maintained throughout the year. In this way the days would continue to lengthen as summer comes naturally. After all, do not forget that the time change only changes the clock, and is not responsible for having longer days in summer. We will not have longer winter afternoons either, as we would maintain the current situation during that season.
Having said all this, we can predict that this year the seasonal time change will affect us less than on other occasions. Precisely because we will be able to follow our internal time to a greater extent than that marked by external social schedules. In fact, there will be those who hardly change their routine despite the new official time. The new situation will allow us to experience what would happen if the time change were eliminated, as has been proposed from Europe.
How are the hands of the internal clock adjusted in confinement?
Returning to our confinement, an effective way to ‘charge the battery’ of the biological clock is to enhance the contrast. If our home allows us, we can achieve it by separating temporally (a specific moment) and spatially (a place in the house) work from leisure, day (light, activity, sounds) from night (darkness, rest, silence) , or the working days of the days off (with different types of activity in each case).
It is not advisable to work from bed , or not to differentiate between work and leisure time. And of course, it is essential to dress and wash before starting work.
During the day, we should try to incorporate a “helping” of physical exercise and a good dose of natural light (or, if that is not possible, at least bright artificial light). When night falls, however, the light should be dim and warm, it is advisable to reduce physical activity, and try to keep your mind calm and away from work and worries. It is time to start the personal routines that lead us to sleep.
The path to sleep has no shortcuts. It requires time and routines, as well as an environment of silence and darkness. And of course, it is not advisable to read news on our mobile devices before going to sleep. Even less in these circumstances. By following these tips, it will be easier to maintain the health of our biological clock and, in addition, we will notice an improvement in our mood and general well-being.
On the other hand, in quarantine we no longer have justification for not eating before three in the afternoon. We also have no justification for not getting 7-9 hours of sleep each night. The excuse that the film “ended very late” does not even serve us, since every day it is more frequent to use new platforms where we can choose the schedule à la carte. During this period of confinement neither the school bus will stop by at 7:30 to pick up the children, nor will we have to clock in at 8:00 in the morning at work. But that does not mean not winding the watch properly.
Hopefully soon we will get back our lives and our social synchronizers. Meanwhile, our solidarity, thanks and admiration for all the workers who allow us to live in quarantine. The rest, let’s stay at home nurturing our home routine clock. It is the best help we can give. And next year, we will surely grumble again at the ‘annoyance’ of having to adapt to the spring time change.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.
Authors: María de los Ángeles Rol de Lama, professor and co-director of the Chronobiology Laboratory of the University of Murcia / Juan Antonio Madrid Perez, professor and researcher at the Laboratory of Chronobiology of the University of Murcia / María Ángeles Bonmatí Carrión, postdoctoral researcher in Physiology from the University of Murcia.
