Vaccines usually protect you against a single, specific illness. They give the immune system a heads-up about what that invader will look like, so your cells are ready to leap into action. 

Some, though, do something a little different. 

For instance, researchers noticed during the pandemic that people who received the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis—which is not recommended in the U.S. but is commonly used in countries where the disease is endemic—had extra protection against COVID-19. That meshed with decades of observations that the shot prevents a smattering of other diseases. While the vaccine itself has a mixed success rate, the way it works has piqued scientists’ interest: BCG revs up the innate immune system, it turns out, which is not specific to a given pathogen, and provides broad, albeit low-level, protection against many different infections.

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So, could there be a way to make a more comprehensive vaccine—one that protects against many viruses and bacteria at once? In a new paper in Science, researchers describe a vaccine, given in four doses of nasal spray, that prevented mice from being infected by flu, COVID-19, SARS, and a bacterium that causes respiratory infections. The findings will need to be confirmed and the vaccine approach tested in other animals, including humans, before its true significance is clear. But the study provides a tantalizing glimpse of a fundamentally different, far-reaching way of preventing disease.

A curious mix of ingredients

The goal was to stimulate immune pathways similar to those triggered by BCG, without including a live bacterium, as that particular vaccine requires, says Bali Pulendran, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University and an author of the new study. Accordingly, the new vaccine contains a cocktail of substances intended to stimulate several aspects of the immune system.

When the researchers gave the treatment to mice over the course of four weeks and then exposed them to pathogens, what they saw was promising. “One month after immunization, three months after immunization, and in some cases, up to six months after immunization, the mice were protected against SARS-CoV-2, the original SARS pathogen, and another coronavirus,” as well as other pathogens, says Pulendran. Exploring further, they discovered that the vaccine had induced the formation of tiny immune structures in the lungs, fortresses from which the mouse’s body could continually fight infection.

Those structures seem to be key, says Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunology at Yale School of Medicine who was not involved in the study but calls it “very interesting.” 

“In humans, there are different structures in the nose and the throat and the deeper lung,” she says. “Whether or not this type of vaccination can induce similar structures in humans is something that needs to be tested.”

Further work needed

Indeed, the next step to building on these results will be further testing, says Pulendran. Humans and mice, although they have their similarities, are different in many ways that could scuttle efforts to bring this approach closer to application. A vaccine that can protect against many diseases simultaneously is still a long way off.

But this research is an interesting move in that direction, says Ellen Foxman, a professor of immunology at Yale School of Medicine who was not involved in the study. “It’s a really exciting idea. And in my view, this is also a trending idea in immunology,” she says, noting that the effects of BCG during the pandemic got many researchers thinking about how to produce broad protection with new types of vaccines. While this study may be among the first to probe this relationship, she expects to see more work along these lines in coming years.

As researchers explore a potential vaccine like this one in humans, they will undoubtedly uncover some surprising details about how immunity functions. “I feel there’s lots of rich new biology here,” says Pulendran, who is curious whether a similar approach might work for diseases beyond respiratory ones.

The process of understanding how the human immune system responds to such a treatment will certainly be illuminating, says Foxman. “The typical vaccinations we’ve had for decades. There’s decades of experience of how they work in humans,” she says. “And for this sort of thing, there’s really no experience yet of how it works in humans. So that’s the open question.”  

Want to meet some smart Canadians? Head to Kootenay, a mountainous region in southeast British Columbia—specifically to the town of Creston. On March 8, most of North America and Europe, along with some Caribbean and Central American Countries, will move their clocks one hour forward and commence Daylight Saving Time (DST). But as the Canadian Broadcasting Company reports, unlike those other places, once the move is made, British Columbia will stick with the change, not going back to Standard Time next fall.

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“We are done waiting. British Columbia is going to change our clocks just one more time—and then never again,” said the province’s Premier David Eby in his March 1 announcement.

The little town of Creston, however, is opting out—abiding by a local tradition of sticking with Standard Time year-round, “without any hassle” of the twice-a-year clock change, says the Explore Creston Valley website. And I, in turn, say bravo Creston.

DST—not to put too fine a point on it—is a scourge, a time when clocks align with the will of the legislatures that make the laws, but not with the more compelling cycles of the sun and our bodies. It’s a season when we wake up in the dark, before dawn has broken, and then must suffer interminable evenings when the sun—like a dinner guest who has lingered long past the cigars and port—is still hanging about. DST has been associated with increased episodes of unipolar and bipolar depression, higher rates of ischemic stroke, more workplace injuries and traffic accidents, and more cases of obesity.

Read more: What to Know About Daylight Saving Time as Another Clock Change Looms

“We go from Standard Time, which is more aligned with the sun, to daylight saving time, and we see a lot of negative things that happen afterwards,” says Dr. Karin Johnson, professor of neurology at the University of Massachusetts Chan School of Medicine-Baystate and chair of the Coalition for Permanent Standard Time, which is associated with the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM). “[There are] a lot of bad outcomes, and people just don’t like it.”

The polling reflects that. DST is admittedly wildly popular in British Columbia—with 93% of respondents approving of it year-round. Turkey has also adopted DST throughout the year. But those two are decided outliers.

According to the Pew Research Center, only about a third of countries around the world observe DST at all—most of them in North America and Europe. One 2018 survey by the European Commission reported a whopping 84% disapproval rating for DST across the continent. In the U.S., a 2025 Gallup poll found a smaller but still significant majority of 54% supporting the abolition of DST in favor of year-round Standard Time. 

The AASM is in agreement with the DST opponents. In a 2020 position paper published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, the group said, “​​An abundance of accumulated evidence indicates that the acute transition from standard time to Daylight Saving Time incurs significant public health and safety risks…It is, therefore, the position of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine that these seasonal time changes should be abolished in favor of a fixed, national, year-round Standard Time.”

It’s those risks to health that provide the biggest arguments against DST. A Sept. 2025 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, for example, found that permanent Standard Time would lower the U.S. prevalence of obesity by 0.78% (or 2.6 million cases) and of stroke by 0.09% (or 300,000). A 2018 paper in the journal Internal and Emergency Medicine found up to a 29% increase in heart attacks following the switch to DST. The problem is that messing with the time also messes with our circadian rhythms—which disrupts virtually every system in the body. 

“We’re changing the clocks but we’re not changing the signals our body aligns to,” says Johnson. 

Those signals are set by the rising and setting of the sun, and it’s when we’re on standard time that dawn most aligns with the time we wake up and dusk most aligns with when we’re readying for bed. This can throw off our sleep cycles, which in turn leads to inflammation and hormone dysregulation, and increases in the stress hormone known as cortisol. That causes cardiac, metabolic, and other downstream health effects. And it’s not just in the few days surrounding the clock change—when we would presumably be getting adjusted to darker mornings and brighter evenings—that our bodies feel the effects; our circadian system struggles throughout the entire season.

“Months after,” says Johnson, “hormone levels have adjusted a little, but they’re still closer to Standard Time.” Mental health can be affected too, with the Pennsylvania-based Cognitive Behavior Institute reporting that symptoms of anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder all increase following the time shift.

Read more: The 1 Small Change That Can Reset Your Sleep

There’s a certain measure of bait-and-switch in DST too, particularly when it comes to traffic safety. One of the common arguments for turning clocks forward in the spring is that it creates an hour more of daylight in the evening, making the roads safer for people driving home from work or going out in the early evening. But the change also means darker mornings for people commuting to their jobs. And disrupted sleep can spell distracted or fatigued driving. One Spanish study published in the journal Epidemiology found a startling 30% increase in fatal car accidents from 1990 to 2014 on the day clocks sprang forward. 

Workplace errors, particularly in hospitals, are associated with DST distraction as well. A 2020 study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found that medical errors such as administering the wrong medication to patients increased up to 8.8% in the seven days following the switch to DST. “Writing the wrong prescription or [caregivers] sticking themselves with needles are definitely increased if people aren’t getting enough sleep or good quality sleep,” says Johnson.

Another promise of DST proponents—that more daylight hours will lead to reduced energy consumption due to less energy burned lighting homes and businesses—has fallen flat too. The rising popularity of LED bulbs—which use 75% less energy than incandescent bulbs—means lighting is making up a smaller and smaller share of the nation’s energy budget, making DST gains negligible. Meanwhile, additional hours of daylight lead to increased air conditioning use—something that is especially concerning as climate change raises mean temperatures, especially during daylight hours. Hawaii and Arizona are the only U.S. states that don’t observe DST, and in the case of Arizona, the move came in an attempt to keep those cooling costs down. The state’s air conditioning costs are lower than neighboring states that do observe DST, according to Johnson.

For now it doesn’t look like the rest of the U.S. is ready to follow most of the rest of the world and get off the DST train. In December 2024, then-President-elect Donald Trump announced in a Truth Social post that the Republican Party would endeavor to end DST, calling it “inconvenient, and very costly to our nation.” But once in the White House he labeled it a “50-50” issue and backed away from ending the annual clock change. Since 2018, Congress has regularly taken up the Sunshine Protection Act, which would follow British Columbia’s lead and enshrine DST nationwide and year-round—but the bill has never cleared both chambers of Congress and made it to the president’s desk for a signature. Nineteen state legislatures have laws on the books making similar provisions, but the Uniform Time Act of 1966 prevents those measures from taking effect without the consent of the federal government.

So for now, the semi-annual back-dialing and future-tripping will continue—with legislation to change it advancing only slowly. Johnson says that since the Coalition for Permanent Standard Time has been educating the public more on the harms of DST, states have stopped pushing for that as a permanent shift. Instead, she says, “We’re seeing many more states that are at least introducing bills for permanent Standard time.” Until they pass, prepare once again for all of the many clocks in your life—in your kitchen, on your night stand, on your phone, computer, watch, tablet, appliances, TV, and in the circadian systems of your very cells—to do their seasonal dance.

The list of health conditions that benefit from the GLP-1 weight loss and diabetes drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound, continues to grow.

The drugs are already approved to lower the risk of heart disease, sleep apnea, kidney and liver conditions. In the latest study on the medications, published in the BMJ, researchers led by Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, from the department of medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine, report that people taking the drugs lowered their risk of developing addictions, as well as reduced the negative consequences of addictive behaviors, including hospitalizations, overdose and death.

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“There are a smattering of studies here and there, small studies that look at one type of substance use—for example, alcohol—but there really is not a single human study that comprehensively evaluates two things: 1) the risk of new onset substance use disorders across all major substances, and 2) harm reduction, or the question of do these drugs really reduce the risk of drug overdoses, drug deaths, drug-related hospitalizations, emergency room visits, and suicides,” says Al-Aly.

He and his team analyzed health records from more than 600,000 people in the Department of Veterans Affairs system, who represented a broad swath of the population, although most were men. All of the participants were diagnosed with diabetes and prescribed either a GLP-1 drug like Ozempic or Mounjaro, or a different group of diabetes medications known as SGLT2 inhibitors, such as Farxiga or Jardiance. While GLP-1 drugs work in the brain, the SGLT2 drugs do not, acting instead on the kidneys to remove excess sugar. That’s why previous studies suggested that GLP-1 drugs could have benefits in treating addictions—as weight loss drugs, they suppress the reward signals in the brain, in the mesolimbic system, that reinforce cravings and so-called food noise that many people with obesity report. Addictive substances such as nicotine, alcohol, cocaine, and opioids tap into the same brain region to reinforce cravings for and dependence on those substances.

Among people who did not currently have a substance use disorder, Al-Aly studied their likelihood of becoming addicted to alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, nicotine, or opioids over a three year follow-up period after being prescribed either a GLP-1 or a SGLT2 inhibitor. Across each of the different substances, people taking the GLP-1 showed anywhere from 14% to 25% reduced risk of developing an addiction to one of them, compared to people prescribed an SGLT2 inhibitor. The reduction was greatest for the chance of developing a dependence on opioids, which could be an important new strategy for addressing the growing epidemic of opioid addiction around the world.

The researchers then looked at whether the weight loss drugs had any benefit in helping people who already had a substance use disorder. And they found that GLP-1 medications were helpful in lowering the risk of emergency department visits by 29%, hospitalizations due to their addiction by 26%, overdose by 39%, and deaths from drug-related causes by 50%.

“The biggest revelation for me is that [these GLP-1 drugs] are working across different substances,” says Al-Aly. “Previously, in addiction medicine, there were medications tailored to treat specific substances—nicotine patches for smoking, other treatments for alcohol and another treatment for opioids. There is no medicine, or no precedent in our armamentarium that actually has this property of working across addictive substances.”

This means the results could provide a key foundation for establishing GLP-1 medications as a potentially new class of drugs that could both prevent and treat different types of addictions, he says. But more studies need to be conducted to better understand exactly how the medications should be used in these cases. The current study, for instance, does not delve into the issue of dose or duration of the medications—studies in weight loss show that once people stop taking the drugs, their effects dissipate and many people regain weight. The same phenomenon could occur in addictions, since the drugs work by suppressing the reward signals in the brain; if the drugs are no longer present, those craving signals could return. 

“I worry about what will happen since if [these drugs] put the lid on craving in the mesolimbic system [of the brain], then all of a sudden people stop taking them, that the craving then comes back with a vengeance,” says Al-Aly. “I worry that in dealing with people with cravings, and people at risk of overdosing and other problems, that we need to understand and appreciate the uncertainties here more.”

He says that another issue that must be explored further before prescribing GLP-1s to prevent or treat addictions is the ability of the brain to adapt. If people start taking GLP-1s to prevent or control addictions, it’s not clear whether the brain would develop a tolerance to the drugs and therefore reach a point at which the medications would no longer effectively control cravings. “I’m excited by these results,” says Al-Aly. “But as a scientist, I would not advise prescribing [GLP-1s] for the sole indication of addiction at this point, pending more studies and understanding, and more resolution of uncertainties.”

Still, the data are the first step in understanding a potentially powerful new way these medications could be used to address another significant health issue that so far hasn’t enjoyed truly effective prevention and treatment strategies. If the current data are replicated and better understood, for example, it could open the door to preventing addictions before they become harmful and cause irreparable harm, both physically and behaviorally. Such an intervention would be unprecedented in the addiction space, and require additional research to identify stronger risk factors for addictive behaviors, whether they are genetic, environmental, or behavioral, or a combination. 

“Who benefits from them the most is the next big question,” says Al-Aly. “At this point, we don’t really know. Are there subsets of people among these 600,000 person cohort who might benefit more from GLP-1s? We would need additional follow up studies.”

For now, even if the data don’t support using the GLP-1 medications to just prevent or treat addictions, Al-Aly says that if people qualify for the drugs because they have diabetes or are overweight or obese, and they also want to quit smoking, stop drinking, or control their opioid dependence, then the GLP-1 medications could help. “For those people, these data give them an additional rationale,” he says. “It will literally help them reach their two goals. But for prescribing for the sole purpose of controlling addiction—I don’t think we are there yet, and need to resolve more uncertainties about what happens when people discontinue the medications, as well as neuroadaptation, before we start making recommendations.”

Sometimes, sleep can feel like a bit of a nuisance—it’s often the first thing people give up when there isn’t enough time in the day. But growing evidence suggests that not getting enough sleep doesn’t just make you tired in the morning. Over the long term, it may endanger your heart. 

A new paper in the Journal of the American Heart Association adds to this research by following about a million U.S. veterans over a couple of decades, asking whether those with both insomnia and sleep apnea, where breathing is interrupted during sleep, had a higher risk of heart problems.

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Indeed, compared to people with no sleep disorders, they had more than double the risk of developing high blood pressure and more than quadruple the risk of developing heart disease. While the study can’t establish why these correlations exist, the results add to the evidence that sleep has a role in maintaining our long-term health.

Dangerous disruptions

This study draws on a vast database of medical records of post-9/11 U.S. veterans who receive health care through the Department of Veteran Affairs, or VA. This information was promising material for probing the link between sleep disorders and the heart, says Allison Gaffey, a clinical health psychologist at the Yale School of Medicine and an author of the new paper. “We know that veterans have higher rates of sleep disorders” than the general population, she says. “This is driven by a variety of factors, including deployment-related stress, irregular sleep schedules, psychiatric comorbidities such as PTSD, depression, and anxiety, and then also physical injuries and chronic pain.” What’s more, veterans also have higher rates of heart disease, raising the question of whether dealing with the sleep problems might bring those numbers down. 

When the researchers ran their analysis, they were surprised by how strong the connection was between heart problems and sleep disorders. The study population was fairly young; more than 40% were age 39 or under when they enrolled in the VA’s services. And both men and women with the sleep disorders were equally likely to see a spike in heart risk. 

Read more: The 1 Small Change That Can Reset Your Sleep

“We have this mindset that cardiovascular disease occurs later in life, and we don’t have to think about heart health and heart prevention until that part of our life,” Gaffey says. “However, the foundation for our cardiovascular health really begins far earlier than is recognized, and these findings really suggest that sleep disruption can influence cardiovascular risk much earlier than we typically think.”

Getting to the root of the problem

The results are consistent with what other studies have found, says Peter Catcheside, a sleep and respiratory physiologist at Flinders University in Australia who was not involved in the work. The research also raises the question of how to handle treating the pair of sleep disorders. 

The gold standard treatment for obstructive sleep apnea is wearing a positive airway pressure, or CPAP, machine for sleep. For insomnia, it’s a form of cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT-I, that helps get sleep back on track. Neither is a trivial undertaking. Would it be better to treat one first?

“It’s quite complicated as to which one you deal with first,” says Catcheside, who co-authored a study in 2019 on this question; however, that work found that providing CBT-I first before moving to CPAP was more effective than going the other way. Catcheside emphasizes that understanding the underlying cause of each of the disorders in a given individual can make all the difference in addressing their health. Some people who have sleep apnea, for instance, might be diagnosed with insomnia as well. But a closer look could reveal that it’s the apnea that’s waking them up repeatedly and making it hard to reach deeper stages of sleep, and if the apnea is treated the insomnia disappears.

Getting to the bottom of why someone isn’t sleeping well, as complicated as that might be, may pay real dividends, Gaffey says: “Sleep isn’t just about feeling tired. It’s really about your long term cardiovascular future…it’s an active, restorative biological process, and that chronic disruption of sleep has measurable consequences downstream.”

She hopes future work will delve more into the question of whether treating these disorders early can change the cardiovascular health outlook, both for veterans and civilians. “A key message is this: Don’t normalize persistent sleep problems,” she says. If several nights a week you have a lot of trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, if you are often tired in the day, see someone about it. You might end up changing your life for the better. 

When Marina Zhukova was 17 and studying abroad in Germany, her host mother pulled her aside during a welcome dinner and asked a startling question: “Are you struggling with anorexia?”

She wasn’t—she was queasy from a stomach bug and could barely sip tea, let alone touch the hearty feast. But years later, as a psychologist who treats adolescents with eating disorders, Zhukova still thinks about that moment. For someone struggling with disordered eating, she says, a direct question could be lifesaving.

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“I really applaud her vigilance,” says Zhukova, director of the Center for Eating Disorders at UTHealth Houston. “This was our very first meeting, and she spoke up anyway. She spotted a potential red flag and didn’t wait at all.”

Often, people bite back their concerned comments because their loved one doesn’t look “sick enough,” she says. They can still go to school or work, exercise, and generally function—creating the illusion that there’s no urgency. In reality, the sooner you speak up, the better.

Zhukova teaches people to look for these eating disorder warning signs: behavioral changes like skipping meals consistently and exercising multiple times a day, even when injured or sick; eliminating certain food groups; attaching moral labels to food; making frequent excuses for not participating in social gatherings; visiting the restroom immediately after a meal; and a focus on body checking, or compulsively measuring body parts or scrutinizing how clothing fits. Physical symptoms can include feeling dizzy or faint; being cold all the time; and irregular menstrual periods.

“It’s not one thing—we’re looking for a pattern and a change over time,” Zhukova says. “What often stops early treatment is that loved ones wait for the person to ask for help.” But that rarely happens. Eating disorders are what clinicians call “ego-syntonic,” she explains—“a very fancy term that just means it feels like part of the personality, something people can feel proud of.”

In other words, waiting for someone to admit they need help can mean waiting too long. If you’re concerned, experts say it’s better to speak up early—and to do so thoughtfully.

How to open the conversation

Once you decide to address your concerns, make sure you’re in a quiet, private place when neither of you is rushed for time. It shouldn’t be on the heels of a stressful meal or in any other food-centric scenario, says Alexandra Kasputis, a therapist and certified eating disorders specialist in New York. That helps prevent your loved one from feeling ambushed. “What you say matters,” she says, “but how you say it often determines whether or not the person feels safe enough to hear you.”

The goal of that first conversation isn’t to diagnose someone; rather, it’s to create space for support, Kasputis says. It’s important to make it clear that your concern is grounded in curiosity and compassion, and that you’re not there to make judgments or assumptions. “There’s no expectation to say things perfectly,” she adds. “You’re not going to. What matters the most is showing up with genuine care.”

Read More: 15 Things to Say When Someone Comments on Your Weight

Speak from a first-person perspective, and don’t name specific behaviors, Kasputis advises. Stick to observations: “I’ve noticed you seem a little more stressed around food lately, and I just wanted to check in. How are things feeling for you?” Or: “I’ve noticed lately that when we go out for lunch, you tend to say you’ve already eaten and don’t order anything.”

These kinds of neutral observations work well because they’re pointing out what you’ve noticed, rather than labeling or assigning motives, says Cherie Miller, an eating disorder and body image therapist in Southlake, Texas. If your loved one does open up, start by validating their emotions rather than jumping straight into solutions: “That sounds really hard, and I’m so glad you told me.” Eventually, you can gently ask if they’re open to finding a therapist or other professional help—and remind them that doesn’t mean you’re going anywhere.

Let your friend or family member know they don’t have to figure everything out right away, that they’re not alone, and you’ll be at their side one step at a time. “It’s OK to say, ‘I don’t know exactly what to say, but I’m here for you, and we’ll figure it out together,’” Miller says.

If they swear everything is OK

Not every conversation will be productive. If your loved one insists they’re fine, don’t force them to listen to your concerns, Kasputis advises. She prefers acknowledging their boundary: “OK, I just wanted to check in because I care. If you do notice that food is feeling stressful, or things are feeling harder in general, please know I’m here.”

If that initial conversation doesn’t go anywhere, don’t get discouraged, Kasputis adds; instead, check in consistently with your friend. That sends a powerful message: “I’m here for you, and I’m not going away.”

“Sometimes the most important outcome of that first conversation is simply them knowing that you’re a safe person,” she says. “We can open the door, but we can’t make anyone walk through it. It’s the fact that our loved ones know it’s open.”

What not to say

Certain comments can push your friend or family member away, or prove harmful in other ways. Body talk is off-limits, Miller says: You don’t want to tell someone they look super thin, for example. Miller recently overheard a father telling his daughter that she was so skinny, she looked “disgusting.”

“I understand the motivation there is, ‘You’re scaring me with what’s happening, and I’m trying to motivate you to get well,’” Miller says. “But that is definitely not going to be a helpful thing to say.” Such a comment could fuel restrictive habits—“Oh, good, it’s working”—or push someone deeper into shame and secrecy.

Read More: Can I Ask Someone if They’re on Ozempic?

Avoid communicating in a way that centers your fear, Kasputis says, like going on and on about how worried you are. Comments like “I can’t keep watching this” aren’t helpful, either. “When we let fear lead, it usually just results in increased shame and pressure,” she says. “It’s unintentionally shifting that focus away from our loved one’s experience, and that’s what we really want to be creating the most space for.”

It’s also a good idea to avoid rattling off numbers, like how many calories per day your loved one needs, or how low their BMI is. “Eating disorders are illogical,” Zhukova says. “They’re disorders for a reason—so don’t try to reason.”

Speaking up won’t guarantee immediate change. Eating disorders are complex, and often tied to identity, control, and shame. But early conversations—even imperfect ones—can interrupt isolation and plant the seed that help is possible. And over time, that can make all the difference.

“It’s going to be awkward. It’s supposed to be awkward,” Zhukova says. “And it’s still very important to do this. Loved ones are the engine of change.”

It’s almost that time of year again.

Starting in just a few days, the sun will appear to rise later in the morning and set later in the evening in most of the U.S. thanks to the long-standing—and controversial—practice known as Daylight Saving Time.

The practice of changing the clocks twice a year is unpopular, dubiously effective in achieving its intended aims, and criticized by many experts for its health effects. While the majority of the U.S. continues to jump forward and back an hour each year, some American lawmakers have proposed making Daylight Saving Time permanent. Most other countries don’t observe the practice, including several that have opted to end it within the past decade.

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Read more: The Dark Side of Daylight Saving Time

Here’s everything you need to know about Daylight Saving Time this year.

When do the clocks go forward in March 2026?

For the states that observe it, Daylight Saving Time begins on the second Sunday in March each year. In 2026, that is March 8, meaning that at 2 a.m. local time on Sunday, the clocks will move forward by one hour, to 3 a.m.

Read more: The U.S. Tried Permanent Daylight Saving Time Before. Here’s What Happened

How does Daylight Saving Time work?

Under Daylight Saving Time, the clocks jump forward by an hour every March, effectively shifting the hours in which daylight appears.

That shift in the clocks lasts for more than half a year, until Daylight Saving Time ends in November. After that point, the sun appears to rise earlier in the morning and set earlier in the evening again—until the following March, when Daylight Saving Time starts once more.

Read more: Daylight Saving Time Makes No Sense Anymore

Why do we have Daylight Saving Time?

Daylight Saving Time is meant to better align daylight hours with the times people are most active during the part of the year when the weather is typically warmer.

Initially, the practice was established in the U.S. as part of an energy conservation effort during World War I, though there are conflicting reports on whether observing Daylight Saving Time actually helps conserve energy.

Read more: The Real Reason Why Daylight Saving Time Is a Thing

How does Daylight Saving Time affect your health?

Many experts have criticized Daylight Saving Time, saying that the practice impacts sleep and overall health. Experts previously told TIME that changing the clocks twice a year disrupts people’s sleep and circadian rhythm, which is associated with broader negative impacts on their health. Some studies, for instance, have found a link between Daylight Saving Time and a greater risk of stroke. It has also been associated with a greater risk of motor vehicle accidents.

“The spring time change leads to society-wide sleep deprivation,” Jennifer Martin, former president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, previously told TIME.

Read More: See How Much Sleep You’ve Lost to Daylight Saving Time Over Your Lifetime

Which states don’t participate in Daylight Saving Time?

The majority of U.S. states participate in Daylight Saving Time. The two exceptions to that are Hawaii and most of Arizona, which remain on Standard Time year-round. The Navajo Nation, within Arizona, does observe Daylight Saving Time, however.

The U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands also don’t observe Daylight Saving Time.

Read more: The States That Don’t Observe Daylight Saving Time—and the Ones Trying to Stay in It Permanently

Waking up is hard enough. Waking up at the exact same time every day—even on weekends, when you could be luxuriating for another hour (or three) under the covers—can feel borderline unreasonable.

Yet a consistent sleep schedule seven days a week is one of the most powerful ways to improve your sleep quality and, in turn, your overall well-being.

Here’s how making one small change can reset your sleep—especially as daylight saving time approaches.

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Why your body craves consistency

Sleep scientists used to focus on how much sleep people got and how many times they woke up overnight. Now, however, attention is shifting to what clinicians call “sleep regularity,” or sticking to a consistent wake-up schedule.

“This consistency in sleep schedule is one of the newest aspects of sleep that’s starting to be studied in the sleep field,” says Helen Burgess, co-director of the Sleep and Circadian Research Laboratory at the University of Michigan. “We didn’t really consider it enough before, and it’s pretty important.”

Early research suggests that people with irregular schedules are more likely to report depression, poorer sleep, and worse overall well-being—and may even show signs of metabolic disruption, like reduced insulin sensitivity.

Read More: How to Share a Bed While Getting the Best Night’s Sleep

The reason consistency matters so much comes down to your circadian rhythm: the internal clock that runs on a 24-hour cycle. “When we wake up in the morning and open our eyes, we get light. And that light in the morning is a very, very important signal for our circadian clock,” Burgess says. That clock “is basically regulating the circadian rhythms that underlie every aspect of our physical and mental health.” In other words, your brain uses morning light to set the timing for countless processes, from hormone release to body temperature to alertness.

Your circadian system is constantly trying to anticipate what’s coming next. A consistent wake-up time means you’re giving your body light at the same time every morning, which keeps that internal clock stable, Burgess explains. When you sleep in on weekends, you shift that light signal—and your clock shifts with it. That’s why Monday morning can feel like jet lag. Keeping your wake time steady seven days a week helps ensure that “all your underlying circadian rhythms are nice and stable,” Burgess says. “Everything’s occurring at the right time. And that’s a huge positive for our health.”

Is wake time more important than bedtime?

Your bedtime supports your wake time, helping ensure you hit the recommended seven to nine hours per night—so the two naturally go hand-in-hand. But if Burgess had to prioritize one over the other, she’d start with the morning, because a fixed wake-up time is what anchors your internal clock.

“In research studies, we tell people their wake time is set. So there’s no sleep-ins,” she says. Participants are allowed to go to bed earlier if they’re tired, but “we definitely try and keep the wake time quite fixed.”

What if you really need to catch up on your sleep?

If you’re running on fumes after a brutal week, it can be tempting to “catch up” by sleeping in. But Burgess says that’s not the best move. Instead, aim to turn in earlier than you normally would. Going to bed earlier preserves your fixed wake time—and keeps your internal clock aligned with its natural rhythm.

“If today has just been a day and you’re feeling exhausted, then by all means please go to bed earlier, and help yourself that way,” she says. “But we definitely try to keep the wake time quite fixed.”

How to reset your sleep schedule

Resetting your body clock doesn’t have to be drastic—a few small tweaks can make the transition easier.

Ease in

Most people do well shifting their wake time by about half an hour a day until they settle into their ideal schedule. There’s no need to push it more than that. “The circadian system is slow to shift,” Burgess says. “You’re not going to feel good if you’re like, ‘Well, I’m going to start waking up two hours earlier than normal.’”

Don’t expect immediate results

It takes most people about three days to get into the rhythm of a new sleep routine. After a week, benefits like increased daytime alertness and improved mood should kick in. “Don’t expect instantaneous results,” Burgess says. “Give your clock—your body—a little bit of time to adjust.”

Use an alarm clock

Once you choose a new wake-up time, set an alarm to reinforce it. Most people find doing so helpful in the beginning, but as your internal clock adjusts, you’ll probably start waking naturally. “When you’re really accustomed to this, you’ll typically wake up before your alarm,” Burgess says. She looks forward to the days when she opens her eyes and realizes she has another five to 10 minutes to savor the quiet before the morning unfolds.

Prioritize morning light

Instead of lingering in your dark room, aim to get as much light as you can when you wake up. While indoor light can be beneficial, “outdoor light is a bit brighter, so that might be more effective,” Burgess says. Open your blinds right away, and consider adding mirrors to your room to reflect light. (In case you’re wondering: Blue light from your phone is a poor substitute for natural sunlight, which does a much better job regulating your circadian system.)

Read More: 7 Ways to Soothe Your Nighttime Anxiety

People vary in light sensitivity, she adds, and some need more than others. If you’re struggling to adapt to your new sleep routine, consider it a sign that additional light could be helpful. Light treatment devices and wearables can also strengthen the signal to your circadian clock. Burgess tends to use the Re-Timer light device in her research, and people typically use it for 30 to 60 minutes in the morning.

And if you really want to sleep in…

Sometimes the idea of staying in bed on a Saturday is simply too appealing to resist. In that case, aim for moderation, not a free-for-all. “We don’t want to be the fun police,” Burgess says. If you’ve already trained your body to wake up at a certain time, chances are you’ll wake up close to your regular time anyway. But you could also set an alarm for half an hour later than usual. “That way, it’s a compromise,” she says. “You’re still getting some of the enjoyment of sleeping in, but you’re not going crazy with it.”

There are more than 170 rhinoviruses known to science. These causes of the common cold are found in noses all around you, and while rhinovirus infections tend to yield lots of snot and self-pity, often they cause no symptoms at all.

But if rhinoviruses are relatively benign for most people, infection can be deadly for others.

The last few decades have revealed that rhinovirus infections are behind a staggering number of asthma attacks, and for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), they are a leading cause of flare-ups, causing breathlessness and coughing that can become dangerous if left untreated. 

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The differences in symptom severity don’t seem to be down to the virus itself. “It’s pretty clear now that if you give someone with asthma or COPD a [rhino]virus and then you give the same dose of rhinovirus to a healthy person, the response is quite different,” says Aran Singanayagam, a clinician scientist at Imperial College London who studies respiratory disease.

To get a better understanding of why this happens, scientists have turned to nasal tissue grown in a dish, which they infect with rhinovirus. Now, in a new paper in the journal Cell Press Blue, researchers report that if the tissue’s first-line defenses fail, then what could have been a mild infection spirals out of control. That confirms, with data from individual cells, that differences in the host’s immune system, not the virus’ behavior, are behind these effects.

A detrimental delay 

When dish-grown tissue catches a cold, only a handful of cells are actually infected with the virus, says Ellen Foxman, a professor of immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine and an author of the new paper. “We see something very similar to what you would often see in a person with a mild or asymptomatic cold,” she says. “Only about 1% of the cells got infected.”

All cells in the tissue, though, had changed behavior. Molecules released by the infected cells, known as interferons, acted as warning signals to their comrades, causing them to activate their antiviral defenses. As a result, the virus could not spread beyond the first infected cells.

What happened if that interferon signal didn’t go out? Foxman and her colleagues asked. They blocked the warning using a drug, and watched as something completely different unfolded. Before their eyes, the tissue started to ooze mucus, and they found that the cells began to produce signals meant to provoke inflammation. “That’s what you see in people with a cold, or people with asthma or COPD attacks–you see excessive mucus production, and you see those inflammatory cells coming to the lung,” Foxman says.

“The timing really matters,” she continues. “If that response is delayed enough to let the virus replicate and get big enough to trigger other pathways, that’s when you’re going to see the symptoms.”

Indeed, that delay agrees with what’s been seen in other studies, says Nathan Bartlett, a professor at University of Newcastle in Australia and Hunter Medical Research Institute who studies rhinovirus. “We found that if you took cells from an airway that has been chronically exposed to inflammation, there’s been a desensitization,” he says. “It just takes them a bit longer to realize that there’s an infection. And so there’s a delay, we saw, by about 24 hours.”

For a rhinovirus, that’s huge—a 24-hour delay means the virus can double its numbers multiple times before neighboring cells get the message. When cells do finally respond, there’s a lot more virus to fight, and the effects can be much more damaging.

A way forward 

This new study, notably, involved only a subset of nasal cells—the dish-grown tissue didn’t have specialized immune cells, for instance, that would be called in when an intact human nose got wind of a virus. However, the study lays out the signals cells send out when the first line of defense is missing, which Foxman hopes will help provide targets for drugs to prevent dangerous reactions to rhinovirus.

The window to intervene in the runaway inflammatory process that seems to kick off in the absence of normal signalling is very small, however. It might make the most sense, speculates Bartlett, to think of a more universal treatment or even, perhaps, a vaccine that could protect the vulnerable before complications arise.

“I’ve seen a number of papers recently that are talking about universal vaccines,” he says, which might stimulate the immune system to provide protection against viruses of all kinds. If such a vaccine is ever brought to the clinic, scientists will be watching to see how it plays out with rhinoviruses.

“We can bring rhinovirus into the conversation now,” he says, “because that’s probably the virus we’re going to be encountering, actually, more than anything. So we better start thinking about it.”

The next time you walk into a glass door, trip over your own two feet, or pass gas during yoga class, laugh at yourself instead of turning beet-red in embarrassment. New research suggests finding the humor in the moment will make you more likeable—and people will see you as warmer, more competent, and more authentic than if you’re still cringing 5 minutes later.

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“For harmless social mistakes, laughing at yourself often makes you look better than blushing or showing embarrassment,” says study co-author Övül Sezer, an assistant professor at the Cornell University SC Johnson School of Business. “Owning your mistake and laughing first can completely shift the room—you move from being judged to being relatable.”

The study—published Feb. 26 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology—was inspired in part by Sezer’s research interests: She studies impression management, or the small behaviors that shape how other people see us. Researchers have long known that embarrassment is a socially useful phenomenon, because it signals remorse and respect for norms. Yet there’s a personal twist to her academic interests, too: Sezer’s experience performing stand-up comedy has shown her that sometimes the better move is to lean into the moment and let out a chuckle.

That dual perspective sparked a question: If you make a mistake, is embarrassment always the best move? Or might laughter be more effective?

When—and why—laughter works

In the study, Sezer and her colleagues ran six experiments involving more than 3,000 participants who read about other people’s embarrassing mishaps, like dramatically knocking over a glass in a restaurant or enthusiastically waving at the wrong person. They were then told or shown photos that gave them a sense of how the person who made the faux pas reacted. In some cases, the individual appeared flustered and self-conscious; in others, they reacted with humor and laughed at themselves. Participants then rated that person on traits such as warmth, competence, morality, and authenticity. Overall, those who laughed at their own minor blunders were judged more positively than those who appeared visibly embarrassed.

“Laughing at yourself signals self-acceptance, and we love people who accept themselves,” Sezer says. The ability to respond with humor is akin to a shoulder shrug—you’re not going to dwell on what other people might think of you. “These are classic, benign norm violations, meaning they’re a little awkward but they’re not harmful,” she adds. Plus, laughing at yourself sends a reassuring message to whoever’s nearby: “You don’t even have to comfort me anymore—it’s the best of both worlds.”

The findings match what Ildiko Tabori, a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles, observes and experiences in real life. She works with comedians at the Laugh Factory in Hollywood and says stand-up offers a kind of real-time laboratory for social dynamics. Comedians who laugh at themselves defuse tension and signal confidence, which makes it easier for audiences to join in. “It allows the audience to laugh at them, too,” Tabori says. “It gives them permission to have a human response.”

Interestingly, study participants frequently saw overt embarrassment as out of proportion to the offense—as if the person felt worse than the situation called for. In the experiments, observers consistently judged everyday blunders to be relatively harmless, even when the person committing them appeared mortified. That mismatch mattered. When someone seemed fixated on a small slip, it suggested heightened insecurity or an overfocus on how they were being judged. “Embarrassment signals heightened self-consciousness,” Sezer says. “It’s almost like you’re overly focused on how you’re being evaluated.”

Laughing, by contrast, conveyed that the person understood the mistake was trivial and didn’t require dramatic self-reproach. In other words, it wasn’t positivity that won people over—it was a reaction that felt proportional to the moment.

An important caveat

A key part of knowing when to laugh at yourself is being tuned in to when doing so isn’t appropriate. Sezer’s study found that people are only judged positively if their mistake is harmless. If someone trips and knocks over a colleague who breaks their arm, for example, it’s inappropriate for the person who caused the injury to laugh at themselves. The same is true if you congratulate a woman on being pregnant—only to learn she’s not.

“If someone else is hurt, laughter doesn’t look confident anymore—it actually looks insensitive, because it signals disregard,” Sezer says. “The key thing is to match your reaction to the seriousness of the moment.”

When someone is harmed, she adds, observers shift from evaluating likability to evaluating morality. In those situations, people expect visible signs of remorse. In the study’s final experiment, participants judged someone who laughed after injuring a colleague as significantly less competent and less moral than someone who showed embarrassment instead. Humor, in that context, wasn’t seen as self-assured—rather, it signaled that the person didn’t fully appreciate the consequences of their actions.

At the heart of it, Sezer says, is emotional calibration: “It’s this emotional awareness of the situation that you signal to others.”

Training yourself to laugh instead of blush

If you’re the type to light up like a fire engine when you say something awkward or get someone’s name wrong, that reaction can feel automatic. Yet there are ways to interrupt it and pivot toward humor instead.

The next time you accidentally hit “reply all” on an email to your entire company, remind yourself of the spotlight effect: We tend to vastly overestimate how much other people notice—and remember—our mistakes. “It’s not going to change your life, and other people don’t care about it as much as you do,” says Caleb Warren, a professor of marketing at the University of Arizona who studies what makes things funny. “People are far more conscious of their own identity than other people’s.”

That’s exactly what Sezer reminds herself before stand-up comedy performances: Other people judge our mistakes much less harshly than we expect they will. She suggests getting in the habit of saying to yourself: “OK, I made this mistake, but was anyone harmed?” The answer is probably no.

“Those types of reframing exercises may help us train ourselves—because I’m also a clumsy person who’s prone to embarrassment,” Sezer says. “This research inspired me to remind myself that I don’t need to be overly apologetic or excessively embarrassed. The best way to shift the dynamic is to laugh at myself, and that helps other people, too, because then they can join you in that laugh.”

In a dark room, in the middle of the night, a woman lies dreaming. Suddenly, her eyes beneath their lids dart crisply left-right, left-right. The eye signal means she knows she’s dreaming.

Lucid dreamers are people who can recognize that they are dreaming and, in some cases, control the content of their dreams. For scientists, they have proven a crucial link to this nightly hallucinatory state. In a new paper in the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness, researchers asked dreamers, both lucid and otherwise, to dream about solving a specific puzzle they’d failed to solve before falling asleep. While the study was small, the team saw signs that dreaming about a puzzle was linked to being able to solve it the following morning–although, intriguingly, normal dreamers were more successful than lucid ones.

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A mysterious landscape

For many years, dreaming was seen as more or less impossible to study scientifically, says Robert Stickgold, a professor at MIT who studies dreaming and memory. The verbal reports of people who’ve just woken up are not strictly speaking an unbiased source of information—you’re just going on their say-so that they dreamt, and what they dreamt about.

Still, scientists have devised clever ways to investigate how sleep and dreams can affect us. Studies have looked at whether playing sounds or providing other prompts during different stages of sleep can influence what people are capable of when they wake up. One recent study found that providing cues to remind people during Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, when most dreams are thought to happen, about a process they had been learning led to better performance later. 

As well, in recent years, researchers have found ways to influence dreams by communicating with people while they are in a lucid state. In 2021, Ken Paller and Karen Konkoly of Northwestern University and their colleagues reported that they had established two-way communication with lucid dreamers, tapping their hands in a specific pattern and having them signal back with eye movements. The sleeping subjects received math questions and dreamed about the solutions, relaying them to the experimenter. This work opened the door to someday, perhaps, asking people in real time what they are dreaming about.

It is still unclear however, whether dreams might have some benefit for us, such as helping us work through issues we encounter during the day. It certainly feels that way—but proving it is far more difficult.

“How do dreams contribute to our creativity and problem solving abilities in the waking state?” asks Paller. “You could ask that by giving people problems before they go to sleep, and see if they come up with the answers when they wake up. But then, you’ll never know if it was because of what they were thinking about before they went to sleep, or as they were going to sleep, or any other time period–not their dreams.”  

Dreaming of solutions

In this new study, to explore whether explicitly dreaming about a problem can help people find solutions to it, Paller, Konkoly, and their colleagues had 20 subjects work on a set of logic puzzles. Each puzzle had a separate soundtrack that played while they worked on it. Then, as the subjects got ready to sleep in the lab, researchers explained that the soundtrack for a randomly selected puzzle they hadn’t been able to solve would play once they reached REM sleep. This was their cue to keep working on the puzzle in a dream. 

No one knew ahead of time which puzzle they’d be asked to solve. That meant the researchers could see whether dreaming of the specific puzzle was linked to solving it later. If dreamers found themselves lucid, the researchers asked them to announce the fact with an eye signal. In the morning, subjects reported their dreams to the researchers and had another chance to work on the puzzles. 

Some people dreamed of puzzles, some didn’t, some were lucid, some were not. Interpreting the data proved tricky, but one thing did come clear, says Konkoly. People who dreamed of the puzzles did tend to be more successful at solving them in the morning. 

Contrary to what Konkoly expected to see, “we had a lower solving rate for puzzles incorporated into lucid dreams,” she says. You’d think that being aware of dreaming and being able to control events would lead to better problem solving. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.

“One theory of creative problem solving is that during wake, you become fixated on an incorrect solution path, and then you forget that during sleep,” Konkoly says. That allows your mind to find the right answer, without interference. Asking people to bring deliberate focus to solving a puzzle during a lucid dream might prevent that forgetting, she speculates. 

Another theory is that lucid dreams might be too much like waking consciousness to help with solving problems. “Your unconscious mind has all this plurality of simultaneously thinking about 10 things at once…It’s not limited by a single track,” Paller muses. “And maybe that’s more creative, in a sense. Maybe lucidity is therefore antagonistic, because you want to not just focus on one thing, but focus on a whole bunch of things.”

The results tally with findings from other work on dreaming and creativity, says MIT’s Stickgold, who was not involved in the study. He points to a 2023 study from his group, led by Adam Horowitz, in which subjects were asked before sleeping to dream of trees. Upon waking, they were presented with tests of creativity around the theme of trees. While the study couldn’t control for what people were thinking about before they went to sleep, the way Paller and Konkoly’s study does, “the more references they had to trees in their dreams, the more creative they were,” Stickgold says. That suggests that priming people to dream about a subject can change how they think about it later.

The way forward

Regardless, Konkoly points out that the goal of this research is to understand what dreams might be doing for us. It’s not to enable us to manipulate dreams for our benefit, at least not yet.

“I think this idea of dream engineering, where you can work with dreams and interact with them, is really important for moving dream science forward,” she says. But “it’s good to keep in mind…that without understanding exactly what dreams are for, we shouldn’t try to co-opt all of them for our waking life goals.” 

Indeed, dreams have an odd staying power. Stickgold recalls that after the tree study, “Adam got notes and text messages from people a week later saying, ‘I’m still dreaming about trees.’” Stickgold wonders whether the effects might last longer than one might think.

“I would like to look at that–that dream induction leading to creativity–and really make clear whether this is a creativity that lasts for half an hour or a day or a week,” he says. “It might have a long-term effect.”