The director of the Cajal Institute, Ricardo Martínez Murillo, has participated in a report for El Confidencial that delves into the social debate around the possible disorders caused by the time change.

The text gathers the opinion of experts from different scientific fields who question the increasingly widespread idea that this time change can cause major disorders such as changes in the quality and duration of sleep, or the risk of accidents cardiovascular.

Great adaptive capacity

In his speech, the director of the Cajal Institute and head of the Neurovascular Research Group minimizes the real incidence of these possible adverse effects, and points to our brain as the great architect of our adaptive capacity, thanks to its plasticity.

For Ricardo Martínez, “the alterations of the daily routine exist, but they are rather insignificant. Beyond the first day, the effects are negligible, because our brain has a great capacity for adaptation. Talking about ‘jet lag’ is quite exaggerated, especially if compared to the long plane trips that have given rise to this concept that refers, above all, to the disorders they cause in sleep.However, the most sensitive people could try to adapt little by little, varying their habits from days before, for example, from 15 minutes to 15 minutes”.