Plan now to ease disruptions with the end of daylight saving time
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Daylight saving time ends on Sunday, Nov. 5, and according to sleep experts, it's time to prepare because the extra hour of sleep also comes with the potential for major disruptions to our health.
“It's easy to sleep in an extra hour, most of us can do that really easily, but it's not as easy to change the time that we go to bed. And so we tend to see a little bit of sleep deprivation as a consequence of that,” said Dr. Andrew Stiehm, a pulmonary and sleep medicine physician at Allina Health.
Stiehm said losing an hour of sleep in the spring is dangerous, with the time change linked to higher rates of motor vehicle accidents and increased risk of heart attack, cardiovascular disease and depression in the following week or two. The same occurs to a much milder degree with the time change in the fall, he said.
To flight sleepiness, our bodies may have higher levels of cortisol or adrenaline which are good for keeping you awake — and bad for blood pressure and coronary arteries.
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Stiehm said the best way to combat this disruption is to make incremental changes. Make 15-minute changes to sleep times and routines starting in the week or two before daylight saving ends.
He said children acclimate to time changes a lot faster than adults because they live on set schedules, rather than on their own internal clocks. Subtle changes to their wind down or dinner times eases the transition for them.
Once clocks have changed, it helps to spend time in the sun, which “is probably the best rhythm-setter,” according to Stiehm.
Stiehm said the consensus of sleep providers is that standard time — the time now experienced between fall and spring — should be year-round. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine called for the elimination of daylight saving time for public health and safety in a 2020 statement.
“If you're mainly worried about health outcomes, like depression, like heart attacks, like automobile accidents, it really does look like standard time is probably the best time. But leisure activities benefit from saving time,” said Stiehm.
In 2022, the U.S. Senate passed a bill that would make daylight saving time permanent across the U.S. beginning in 2023. That bill failed to pass the U.S. House before the last congressional term ended.
Minnesota is one of the states that has enacted legislation that would move the state permanently to daylight saving time if the federal government makes the change nationwide.