This Sunday marks the end of daylight savings time, gifting us an hour to sleep in but stealing an hour of sunshine. Falling back to standard time is much easier on the brain and body than springing forward, where you lose an hour of sleep. Still, this temporal shift disrupts our inner clock.
But with the right strategies, it might be possible to hack our brains so that this change is hardly noticeable. Understanding the cues that our brain and body take can help us subtly manipulate our cycle, easing the transition.
This is your brain on daylight savings
Everybody has an internal clock known as their circadian rhythm, according to Philip Gehrman, an associate professor of clinical psychology in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. This clock runs on an approximately 24-hour cycle that’s regulated by light and dark. By falling back an hour from daylight savings time to standard time, we’re also shifting our circadian rhythm by this same amount of time. “It's basically the same as jet lag, like if you just crossed one time zone,” Gehrman tells Inverse.
Thankfully, our bodies naturally resynchronize with this new time, a process called entrainment. Typically, it takes anywhere between one and five days for someone to fully readjust to the new timing. Whether or not we should mess with that though is another question. Many people appreciate the end of daylight savings because we gain an hour, allowing for extra time sleeping.
“If people are generally not getting enough sleep — which obviously a lot of people are not — it's good to take advantage of that extra hour to reduce some of what we'll call your sleep debt,” Gehrman says.
“As a nation, we're sleep deprived,” says Rafael Pelayo, a clinical professor of psychiatry and sleep medicine at Stanford University. “And that's the horror of daylight savings.”
But if you want to hack your way out of daylight savings, here are a few science-backed tips.
Bedtime is key
Settling on a regular wake-up time also helps. “People think that they wake up depending on when they fall asleep,” says Pelayo. “But the way the brain really works is the opposite. It's better for you to lock in a wake-up time, and your wake-up time regulates your falling-asleep time.” This is because “you can force your brain to wake up,” Pelayo says. “You can't force your brain to fall asleep as easily.”
If you’re not struggling with sleep deprivation, then it’s healthy to keep waking up at the same time you’re used to, even if it’s an hour earlier on the clock. If during daylight savings you woke up at 7 a.m., you’ll now wake up in standard time at 6 a.m.
Sunlight is powerful, use it
Maintaining this sleep and wake schedule can be hard, but using the sun could be key. “By far the strongest cue for entrainment is bright light exposure,” Gehrman says. “And so getting exposed to bright light speeds up our synchronization process.” The part of our brain that controls circadian rhythm is called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN. The SCN has only two synaptic connections to the eye, and light input goes directly to the master clock in our brains.
With this knowledge, being mindful of light exposure is essential to entrainment. “The general rule of thumb is you want to maximize light in the morning and minimize light at night,” he says. To maintain your wake-up timing (especially since it's now technically an hour earlier), he recommends going for a walk or looking out a window first thing in the morning. Similarly, avoiding light at night, including from electronic devices, ushers in restfulness to let your body know what your tweaked bedtime is.
Maintain your mealtimes
Even eating has an impact on our circadian rhythm. Pelayo says that you’ll notice you won’t get hungry or go to the bathroom at the hours you’re used to at first. Gehrman suggests eating at a scheduled time rather than when you feel hungry. So if you eat dinner at 5pm everyday usually, keep that up, even if your body naturally wants to eat at 4pm. Holding off for an hour will help.
Having a meal at the wrong time can create a ripple effect. “It can disrupt the circadian rhythm, which can then disrupt the sleep cycle,” he says.
Put yourself first
Both Gehrman and Pelayo urge individuals to consider their own needs. “What does having an extra hour of sunlight in the morning and more darkness in the evening mean to you?” Pelayo says. Gehrman says that while there are benefits to sticking to your body’s established schedule — and not sleeping in an extra hour — if you’re sleep deprived, you should definitely use that time to rest.
Whether you are able to hack your hour this time around or not, don’t sweat it too much. In March, you’ll be back to where you are now.
