Daylight Saving Time for Columbia nearly here. Here are 6 tips to avoid sleep loss

Take heart, all you lovers of Daylight Saving Time, it’s back.

This Sunday, officially at 2 a.m., clocks will move forward one hour. Remember spring forward, fall back? More evening sunlight?

South Carolina and the legislatures in many other U.S. states have tried to pass legislation to make Daylight Saving Time permanent, but since it hasn’t happened yet, the time of year when your body is not quite in sync with time is upon us.

Dr. Antoinette Williams Rutherford, a pulmonary medicine physician at Prisma Health and an assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, said spring forward is by far the most difficult of the two time changes.

Rutherford, who is also medical director of the Sleep Diagnostic Centers at Prisma Health Richland Hospital, said in a news conference Tuesday the time change can leave people groggy, unable to stay awake during the day and prone to accidents. Lack of sleep can also lead to heart problems, she said.

And the COVID-19 pandemic has not been kind to sleep cycles. People are worried and to compound the problem, many are working from their bedrooms.

She offered these dos and don’ts as Daylight Saving Time roars back:

• Go to bed 15 minutes before your normal bedtime in the three days before the time changes.
  
  
• Have a routine.
  
  
• Take a warm bath.
  
  
• Read a book or, Rutherford said, you can ask Alexa to read you a book.
  
  
• Listen to a podcast or apps that provide calming sounds.
  
  
• And here’s her one, and the biggest, don’t. No TV. In fact, it’s best to not have a TV in the bedroom at all, she said. She doesn’t. Instead, put that TV in the bathroom or the She Shed or Man Cave.

“The bedroom is for sleep, not entertainment,” she said.