It feels cruel, doesn’t it? Being forced to lose a precious hour of sleep tonight.
As daylight saving time (DST) begins in the UK for the summer months, the clocks are scheduled to jump forward by an hour tonight when local time hits 1am. The new local daylight time will therefore be 2am.
Beyond making you feel a little bit more sleepy tomorrow, however, scientists are becoming increasingly concerned that the switch to DST could be having negative effects on our health.
“There is a small uptick in stroke, heart attacks, traffic accidents and sleep loss around the time of the clock change,” professor of neurology and director of the Vanderbilt Sleep Division Dr Beth Malow tells BBC Science Focus.
The effects of 'springing forward' are felt by the young as well as the old, too. One study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine in 2015, for example, found that teens lose an average of 2 hours and 42 minutes of sleep in the weeknights following the switch.
“But more significantly,” Malow continues, “there are health effects for almost eight months related to shifting light away from the morning (due to the clock change) and into the evening.
“We need morning light to wake up, align our biological clocks, improve our mood – we use light boxes in the morning to treat seasonal affective disorder – and get a better night’s sleep. Morning light promotes sleep at night and evening light interferes with it.”
But don’t fret, all is not lost. Here are some simple ways you can fight back against that lost hour.
1. Back up bedtime for a few days leading up to the clock change
Okay, so it might be a bit late this time around, but keep this in mind for the future.
Sleep experts recommend shifting your sleep 15 to 20 minutes earlier each night in the week leading up to daylight saving time.
According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, temporary insomnia symptoms occur in about 30 to 35 per cent of adults and can be caused by a sudden change in sleep schedules, i.e. the switch to daylight saving.
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Gradually easing into it “will allow you to acclimatise to the new time and also give you a little extra sleep going into the change,” Malow says.
But in the absence of time, going to bed a little earlier this evening if you’re feeling sleepy will help too.
2. Expose yourself to bright light in the morning
DST is designed to give us an extra hour of daylight in the evening, which is great for post-work socialising, but not so good for our natural sleep-wake cycles, or circadian rhythms.
The best way to wake yourself up in the morning, and consequently help you sleep at night, is to expose yourself to bright light. According to Malow, natural light is best for this, which gets easier as the summer months roll around since the Sun rises earlier.
“Getting exposed to bright light in the morning helps with alignment of our biological clocks,” she says. “When we align our clocks, we can get to sleep easier in the evening.”
3. Avoid long naps and caffeine late in the day. Exercise instead
If you’re someone who enjoys naps (who doesn’t?), this may come as heartbreaking news. But if you want to catch up on sleep, this isn’t the way to go.
“Naps and caffeine obliterate our ‘drive to sleep’,” Malow explains. Her solution? Exercise instead.
“On the other hand, afternoon physical activity wakes us up in that afternoon slump and yet makes us fall asleep easier when it’s time for bed. It increases our drive to sleep.”
That doesn’t mean exercising right before bed, mind you. Exercising releases endorphins and raises your core body temperature, both of which inhibit sleep.
Research published in the European Journal of Sport Science suggests that you should leave at least 90 minutes between hitting the gym (or any other form of exercise) and hitting the pillow.
Read more:
- Keeping your eyes open can help you fall asleep faster. Here’s why
- Tired all the time? Here’s how to kick sleep deprivation for good
- How hidden 'overtiredness' is ruining your sleep – and how to fix it
4. Stay off your phone before bed
Ah, that old chestnut. You’ve heard it before but it’s as true as ever, especially when the clocks jump forward an hour.
Just as bright light in the morning helps wake you up, bright lights at night won’t help you sleep. But technology is particularly troublesome at nighttime because LED screens produce lots of blue light.
The blue of the sky is really good at waking us up, so it tracks that other sources of blue light will be as well.
The reason, Malow explains, is that blue light interferes with the natural release of melatonin in the brain – the hormone that acts like a sleep switch, telling your brain to shut off when its levels increase.
“And the content, like looking at national and international news, can activate our anxiety centres in the brain,” Malow says, which isn’t exactly conducive to a good night's kip post-switch to DST.
It might be time to scrap daylight saving time
Despite being able to minimise the effects of changing the clocks using the aforementioned techniques, many experts are now calling for this antiquated system to be scrapped altogether.
So, should standard time become the new standard?
Alice Gregory, a professor of psychology and director of the Goldsmiths Sleep Lab, tells BBC Science Focus that she thinks it should: “There is wide consensus amongst experts in sleep medicine that living in permanent standard time would have advantages for our health.
“Permanent standard time, as compared to daylight saving time, is more in sync with our endogenous circadian rhythms. The current shift from standard time to daylight saving time is far from ideal.”
Malow wholeheartedly agrees, stating, “Most people are also tired – literally – of the going back and forth.”
About our experts:
Dr Beth Malow is a professor of neurology and paediatrics, director of the Vanderbilt Sleep Division, holds the Burry Endowed Chair in cognitive childhood development and serves as vice chair for clinical research in the Department of Neurology at Vanderbilt University, US. She is also board-certified in neurology and sleep medicine. Malow is involved in the study of sleep as it relates to medical disorders and aspects of sleep medicine related to genetics and circadian biology.
Alice Gregory is a professor of psychology at Goldsmiths. She has contributed to several diverse research areas, including the longitudinal associations between sleep and psychopathology, behavioural genetics, sleep paralysis and exploding head syndrome. In addition to her scientific contributions, she also excels in the public engagement of science. She has published two popular science books (Nodding Off, Bloomsbury, 2018 and Sleepy Pebble, Nobrow, 2019). She regularly contributes articles to the media and has had her work published in outlets including the Guardian, GQ UK, Sud Ouest, Slate Fr and the Independent.
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