I know for me that I consider daylight savings time to be a personal attack on my well being, and now there are studies to back it up.

There has always been an acknowledged link between sleep deprivation and heart attacks, so it really wasn’t rocket science when someone figured out that the onset of daylight savings time each spring caused a several day spike in heart attack incidents.

I suspect if I suffered a heart attack around the onset of daylight savings it would be more out of pent up anger than sleep deprivation, but that’s just my personal whine over the whole subject.

But buried in this whole idea is a life insurance underwriting issue, and a health issue worthy of discussion. Sleep deprivation is obviously caused by more things than daylight savings time. Stress and anxiety are huge players in sleep deprivation as is sleep apnea which interrupts sleep frequently on a nightly basis. While there is no question on a life insurance application about how much sleep a person gets on average, there are questions that cover most of the normal reasons for sleeplessness, such as history of sleep disorders, chronic pain, stress, heart disease, depression, or arthritis.

There is even the vicious cycle of sleep deprivation leading to obesity that leads to sleep apnea which leads to more sleep deprivation. Yikes!

Of course what life insurance underwriters look at are the individual health issues and try not to make leaps of assumption like, bad night’s sleep equals heart attack equals decline.

Bottom line. What it does bring to light is the interconnection between one health issue and another. Things like getting a good night’s sleep can’t be poo-pahed away as unimportant.