As much as that extra hour of sunlight during daylight savings time can be a welcome treat, it also means that you're going to lose an hour of sleep. Which is worse than it sounds. In fact, most people don't even pay attention to the shift.
Until they start feeling the physical and mental fatigue a few days later. As it turns out, though, your exercise routine might be exactly what you need to get through the time change relatively unscathed.
Why? How can exercise during the day help you to survive daylight savings?
Soak Up The Sun
For one thing, exercise tends to help you get outside in the sunlight. Exposure that the sun, in turn, helps to reset your circadian rhythms – which impact your energy production and sleep schedule.
That sunlight also increases your production of vitamin D, a micronutrient that impacts your mood and sleep quality along with a host of other aspects of your health.
Stay On Schedule
Along with reprogramming your internal clock, regular exercise forms habits. Those habits, then, keep you following a routine at given times of day.
Because exercise stimulates the release of numerous hormones and neurotransmitters, your body quickly adapts to it and excepts it as part of your regular schedule.
When you skip exercise, then, your brain notices and you will likely feel different. But what does this have to do with sleep? Anything that help you build a pattern, or ritual, can help you sleep.
That is, as long as you connect a healthy sleep schedule with that pattern. The trick, then, is to stick to both a regular exercise schedule and regular bed time.
General Improvements
Studies have found, however, that exercise generally improves the overall quality of your sleep.
One study in particular looked at data from about 2600 men and women, comparing how their physical exercise routine impacted their sleep.
Individuals who got their recommended 150 minutes of exercise throughout the week not only slept better but also found that they had more energy during the day.
