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Don’t forget to spring forward!

Don’t forget to move your clocks forward an hour, before you go to bed Sunday night and change the batteries in your smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors. Carbon monoxide is an odorless, colorless, and tasteless gas that can incapacitate you  before you’re even aware you’ve been exposed.
 
About that hour of sleep you’ll lose this weekend? One local sleep specialist says your body should easily adjust. At the UPMC Altoona Sleep Center, Dr. Dr. Mehrdad Ghaffari says you don’t need to change your sleeping habits.
 
“I think people should just  sleep naturally at their own hour and most of the time it is a weekend when they change time so it isn’t going to affect their work and their daily activities,”  he explains.
 
However, Dr. Ghaffari says when the clock springs forward, use that as an opportunity to assess your sleep habits. He says most Americans get too little sleep which can lead to high blood pressure and heart attacks.
 
He says adults need to sleep 7 to 8 hours of quality sleep every night and that children and teens require up to ten hours.