Tips for fall time change

iStock.com

By Casey Egan and Empress Rivera-Ruiz

Published October 2024

Updated October 31, 2024

This weekend, on Nov. 3, we will encounter the end of daylight saving time, which means clocks will “fall back” one hour.

While adjusting the clock on your microwave, you might also wonder how this seasonal change impacts our biological clocks. If you’re a parent, you may also be wondering how this change could impact your kids as they adjust to school schedules, weekend activities and most importantly, their sleep and health management.

Maida Lynn Chen, MD, medical director of Seattle Children’s Pediatric Sleep Center and member of the Center for Respiratory Biology and Therapeutics, has spent much of her career investigating sleep, sleep disorders and respiratory conditions. As a clinician-researcher, Dr. Chen shares a few insights on how to navigate the change to our internal clocks.

Dr. Chen: Sleep-wake cycles are regulated by internal body clocks (circadian rhythm), external social clocks and the solar clock. In an ideal world and in optimal health, all three clocks are aligned. Optimal alignment occurs when we wake up and start our days as the sun is rising (not during the dark), and we go to sleep at night after the sun has been down for a little and it’s dark. That alignment is better on standard time, as opposed to daylight saving time, which extends the evening daylight, but keeps mornings dark. Twice a year, the social clock is automatically reset (beginning and end of daylight saving time); these changes essentially induce the equivalent of jet lag for entire nations at a time. This weekend, we go back to standard time, which means clock time moves backwards by one hour. Sleep onset time and wake times will likely be altered for a few days, and sleep itself may be disrupted, particularly at the beginning and end of overnight sleep, as they are misaligned with the new social clock.

Dr. Chen: For younger children, they may awaken an hour earlier, and get sleepy in the evening an hour earlier than predicted based on clock time – just as if they were functioning in a different time zone or daylight saving time. For older children and adolescents who naturally have later wake and sleep times related to pubertal changes, the natural extension to their sleep with the “extra” hour on Saturday night tends to help them actually better align the three clocks.

Dr. Chen: For all children, maintaining a schedule according to the social clock (e.g., timing of meals, bedtime routine) is a cornerstone of mitigating the time change’s impact. Setting clocks back on Saturday night so that the household wakes up to a new clock time on Sunday helps to get Sunday going on the right foot. Avoiding excessive light exposure from screens and media content in the evening hours will help to solidify sleep onset. If possible, morning exposure to sunlight (even on an overcast day!) and physical activity is helpful, particularly on the first day of the change. Remembering that for younger kids, who typically do not “sleep in,” that their wake times may take several days to adjust, so patience and being prepared for a few days of early mornings is helpful. Some children may benefit from a gradual adjustment with bedtimes by pushing them later by 15 minutes each night for a few nights within the change, but most children adjust within a few days on their own.

Stay informed about issues affecting Seattle-area families. Sign up for our newsletter.

Dr. Chen: There are plenty of studies that show across human populations in various countries that daylight saving time is associated with chronic detrimental effects on health, due to persistently misaligned circadian, social and solar clocks.

For the chronic impact of six continuous months of daylight saving time every year, the predominant one is overall chronic sleep deprivation from late sunlight, which prevents sleep onset, and dark mornings, making it harder to wake. Chronic sleep deprivation then leads to increased risks of obesity, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, and depression, to name a few. In children specifically, worsened academic performance and mood occur. Standard time allows for circadian, social and solar clocks to stay in better alignment and minimizes some of these impacts.

In addition to the chronic effects of six months of daylight saving time, there are the two weekends each year where the social clock switches between standard and daylight saving time. The acute impact of those two weekends, the more severe of which is likely the spring time change, are associated with acute sleep deprivation, with increased heart attacks, strokes, hospital admissions, worsened mental health, including more suicides and overdoses, and motor vehicle accidents. These would be minimized should daylight saving time be eliminated, a change that multiple medical and scientific groups are advocating for.

Dr. Chen: Daylight saving time comes with longer evening sunlight and darker mornings, which does not align with our social clocks. For example, in May and June the sun does not set sometimes until 10 p.m., but young children often really need to be asleep much earlier than that in order to get to school on time. However, the late sun in daylight saving time makes that harder, so then total sleep time gets shortchanged, because school start times don’t change with daylight saving time. This is even harder in teens, whose brains and bodies are already pushing to stay up later and later, and the later evening sunlight makes it very difficult for them to sleep for even several hours after the sun sets, as it delays melatonin production. Daylight saving time is associated with chronically shorter sleep times and the health implications for that are rampant in both adults and children.

RSV, COVID, flu: Pediatrician tips for ‘3-bug’ season

New insurance requirements big benefit to babies and families

What personal care product and cosmetics are safe?