Daylight Savings Time just ended, and any kind of disruption in sleep can really become a problem. Dr. Michael Howell is an associate professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School, and is the medical director of M Health Fairview’s sleep performance training program for athletes.

Jill Riley: Thank you for coming back to talk about sleep. How do you think that this time change affects people's sleep pattern?

Michael Howell: As a general rule, people tend to like it. This is the time of year where you get the extra hour and then in the spring, that's when the real frustration tends to jump in. But I would just point out is that this is an opportunity to to recognize the value and the importance of your body's 24-hour clock. That's your circadian rhythm. When you adjust that, even by an hour, you can notice it. Many people are out there struggling with sleep problems or other circadian rhythm disorders, and they really struggle at these times of year when they have to make a change.

Human beings are not computers. You can't just shut them down and put them into sleep mode any time you want to. There is a rhythm. That rhythm tends to align reasonably well with the 24 hour day, [but] everyone is different. Jill, yours is different from mine. Some people are naturally night owls. Some people are early birds, and there's everything in the middle. And the more your circadian rhythm aligns with what you're trying to do with work life, school, relationships, the better you're going to feel, the more refreshing your sleep is going to be, the better you're going to perform.

We’re headed into winter soon, and the darker months. How does light and dark affect our sleep?

[Light is] the strongest cue for your brain and body to understand subconsciously where they are on the planet. Your brain is trying to understand what your circadian rhythm is trying to do, figure out what time zone you're in. The strongest cue is bright light, particularly in the morning. First thing in the morning, bright light [is] essentially a sunrise, even if it's not literally a sunrise. Even if it's just light from a computer screen or a tablet, or from the headlights as you're going into work. Bright light is the signal to your brain that it is time to get up and to get going.

What can we do to adjust to the changes?

My advice is if you can sleep and just enjoy it, take an extra hour. Get that extra hour of sleep and pay attention to how well you feel the next day and this week and and then try to harness that motivation for better sleep and try to get more sleep during the rest of the winter. For individuals who will wake up early and have trouble falling back asleep, the best thing they can do is just take bright light and use it in the evening to try to push their circadian rhythm a little later.

When it comes to light, I mean, you know, is it just a matter of turning the lights on in the house? I hear of people using therapy lights, artificial light, those things. Are they useful?

Yes, they are. The best is the sun. Sure. If you happen to have access to that free fusing ball of helium in the sky, take full advantage of it. However, in Minnesota, even after the sun supposedly rises over the horizon, it's often hard to see - especially in the wintertime. If you have to wake up earlier than seven, eight o'clock in the morning, a 10,000 Lux lightbox: these are the light boxes that are used for people with seasonal affective disorder. They're often called “sad lamps.” Very, very useful. The relationship between seasonal affective disorder and a circadian rhythm problems go hand in hand.

When it comes to kids getting a rhythm back on track or adjusting to time changes, is it that much different?

Well it looks different for everyone because we all have different circadian rhythm. So you might have a night owl in the house, and the the extra hour in the morning goes a long way. If the same household has a has an early bird, getting that extra hour can throw their rhythm off a little bit more. So as a general rule, adolescents tend to be more night owls. They need more sleep in the morning to keep them their circadian rhythm from completely going off the rails. Bright light in the morning is really helpful for them.

Are you an advocate for naps? Maybe this is a really self-serving question, because I want to make a really good argument in my household for why I need to take my afternoon nap.

I'm a relentless partisan on behalf of Team Naps. Human beings are natural nappers. Even if you haven't mapped in decades, there is a little lull in the middle of the day when your body would be able to take a nap if it was properly trained to do so. In order to have a good nap, umber one is the right duration of the nap. You either want to do a short 10- to 20-minute power nap, or you want to do a full 90-minutes sleep cycle. You want to avoid waking up in between there, because if you do, you're going to wake up and wonder what planet you are on.

Then the second thing is to understand: what is your natural nap timing? Jill, your natural nap [time] might be a little bit different from mine. Just like we have different sleep times at night, we have different natural nap times during the day. Then make sure that if you have any underlying sleep issues, that they are taken care of. So if someone has sleep apnea, you don't want to take a nap with sleep apnea. Then just practice: just like anything else, practice taking naps works.

Every Wednesday morning at 8:30 CST, Jill Riley connects with experts and local personalities for some real talk about keeping our minds and bodies healthy — from staying safe in the music scene, to exercising during a pandemic, to voting and civic engagement. Looking for more resources and support? Visit our friends at Call to Mind, MPR's initiative to foster new conversations about mental health. Subscribe to Wellness Wednesday as a podcast on Spotify, Apple, RSS, Radio Public, Stitcher, or Amazon Music.

Wellness Wednesday is hosted by Jill Riley, and produced by Christy Taylor and Jay Gabler. Our theme music is a portion of the song "F.B. One Number 2" by Christian Bjoerklund under the Non Commercial Share Alike 3.0 International License. This week's photo is by Molly Marshall (CC BY-NC 2.0). The image was altered: it was cropped, filtered to greyscale, and supplemented with a logo.