Standard time arrives early Sunday, even as health experts say it should stay all year

“Falling back” one hour on the clock this weekend, giving us an extra hour of sleep, is better than “springing forward” and losing an hour, but experts say the change in clock times twice a year is disruptive to sleep and poses others health risks.

“So when the clock shifts, our biological internal clock gets confused because our daily activities remain on the same clock time — school still starts at the same time, work starts at the same time — but our bodies want to operate on the previous time we ‘ve become adjusted to,” said Lauren Hale, a professor in Stony Brook Medicine’s Department of Family, Population, and Preventive Medicine, and in the Program in Public Health.

The ultimate effect, Hale said in an interview Friday, “is dysregulation across every cell of the human body. It affects mood. It affects sleep. It affects fatigue. And those things affect alertness, and it also affects cardiovascular health.”

At 2 am Sunday, Daylight Saving Time ends and clocks should be turned back one hour. It lasts until March 9.

Hale said gaining one hour in the fall is preferable to losing one hour in the spring, when she said there are more adverse effects on the body.

“In the fall, when we fall back, usually that extra hour allows for people who need it a little more sleep so we don’t really see big health effects,” Hale said. “But in the spring when there’s a 23 hour day for one night, people who are already sleep deprived… get extra-injured because they’re already operating at a sleep deficit. In that week, there’s an increase in car crashes, heart attacks and strokes,” she said.

The time change has been the subject of intense national debate.

Legislation has been introduced both in Congress and the New York State Legislature that would make daylight saving time permanent. Health experts, however, say standard time should be made permanent.

In 2020, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine put out a statement saying standard time should be fixed year-round, saying “… daylight saving time is less aligned with human circadian biology — which, due to the impacts of the delayed natural light /dark cycle on human activity, could result in circadian misalignment, which has been associated in some studies with increased cardiovascular disease risk, metabolic syndrome and other health risks.

Hale said she also is a proponent of having permanent standard time. “Number one, it’s better because clock changes are disruptive to the circadian rhythms” of the human body.

Secondly, she said, “When you have to choose when society gets their light… it’s healthier for individuals to get it earlier in the day because that helps them wake up, reset their circadian rhythm.”