The hour that isn’t: why the clocks going back won’t fix you waking in the night

The clocks go back on Sunday. If you wake in the middle of the night, the extra hour will arrive in the wrong place. Here is what to do with it.

At 2am on Sunday 25th October the clocks go back, and you will be told you are getting an hour’s extra sleep. If your nights break in the early hours, that hour arrives in the wrong half of the night.

Sleep is run by two systems that take turns. The first is sleep pressure, the need that builds through a waking day and is spent in the first few hours of deep sleep. The second is your body clock, which by around 3am has taken over and holds you in the lighter stages you surface from easily ¹. The extra hour is added at the front, where sleep pressure does the work and few people have trouble. It does nothing at the back, where the clock is in charge and the trouble is. In our reviews, people who talk about waking in the night outnumber people who talk about falling asleep by nearly two to one.

The extra hour is added at the front of the night, where few people have trouble. It does nothing at the back, where the trouble is.

Why the change makes the week worse, not better

Nor does the change help in the short term. A Finnish study put wrist monitors on nine people across the autumn transition. In the week after, their sleep was more broken, not less: restlessness rose by about half and sleep efficiency fell ². Nine is a small number and I would treat the exact figures with caution, but the direction agrees with everything else we know. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine reckons either clock change disturbs sleep for five to seven days ³.

The reason is that your body clock answers to the sun, not to the Government. A survey of some 55,000 Europeans found that people’s sleep timing tracks dawn, whatever the official time zone says ⁴. The autumn change is the gentler of the two because, for once, the clocks move towards the sun. Gentler is not painless.

Two things that move the clock that matters

So don’t try to bank the hour. Use the weekend to move the clock that matters. Two things work, and neither costs anything.

Keep your usual times by the new clock, at both ends of the day. If you normally get up at six, get up at six on Sunday, not at five because your body says so. If you normally go to bed at ten, go to bed at ten, even though you’ll feel ready an hour earlier. Give in to either and your body stays on the old time for the rest of the week.

Spend 20 minutes outdoors before 10am on Sunday and Monday, without sunglasses. Morning daylight is the strongest cue your body clock receives and the one most reliably shown to move it ⁴⁵. A coffee on the doorstep counts. A window will not do; even an overcast sky is many times brighter than any room.

Morning daylight is the strongest cue your body clock receives. A coffee on the doorstep counts; a window will not do.

The familiar advice still stands. Dim lights and a cool room half an hour before bed, because falling light and a small drop in temperature are the signals your body waits for ⁶⁷.

Tomorrow’s to-do list written on paper, which in one sleep-lab study sent people off faster than anything else they tried, and the more specific the list, the faster they went ⁸. And no coffee after early afternoon: taken six hours before bed it still cost people up to an hour of sleep, without their noticing ⁹.

Then there are our Sleep Time Patches, which is the bit I’m biased about. Each carries 10mg of CBD and 5mg of CBG with valerian root, passionflower and hops, is worn on the hip, the upper arm or the top of the foot, and is designed to last eight to ten hours, which is to say through the half of the night the clocks leave alone.

They are not addictive or habit forming, and you can use them every night or only on the bad ones. Find out all about them here.

For the moment the night breaks, there is also the sleep mist, which is what I reach for at three.

Judge the results on Monday morning, not at 3am. March will take the hour back regardless.

See the Sleep Time Patches →

Matt
Co-founder, KLORIS

The research

Every claim above rests on a published source. We put them here so you can read them yourself.

1. Dijk DJ, Czeisler CA. “Contribution of the circadian pacemaker and the sleep homeostat to sleep propensity, sleep structure, electroencephalographic slow waves, and sleep spindle activity in humans.” Journal of Neuroscience, 1995. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7751928/
2. Lahti TA, Leppämäki S, Lönnqvist J, Partonen T. “Transitions into and out of daylight saving time compromise sleep and the rest-activity cycles.” BMC Physiology, 2008. (n=9, wrist actigraphy; after the autumn transition, fragmentation up by an average of 54%, sleep efficiency reduced.) https://bmcphysiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1472-6793-8-3
3. American Academy of Sleep Medicine. “Daylight Saving Time health advisory.” Adopted 2016. (“Moving into or out of DST has adverse effects on sleep/wake patterns that last about 5–7 days.”) https://aasm.org/?p=17557
4. Kantermann T, Juda M, Merrow M, Roenneberg T. “The human circadian clock’s seasonal adjustment is disrupted by daylight saving time.” Current Biology, 2007. (Survey of ~55,000; sleep timing follows dawn under standard time; adjustment readier at the autumn transition than the spring.) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2007.10.025
5. Wright KP et al. “Entrainment of the human circadian clock to the natural light-dark cycle.” Current Biology, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2013.06.039
6. Gooley JJ et al. “Exposure to room light before bedtime suppresses melatonin onset and shortens melatonin duration in humans.” Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 2011. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21193540/
7. Harding EC, Franks NP, Wisden W. “The temperature dependence of sleep.” Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2019. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2019.00336/full
8. Scullin MK et al. “The effects of bedtime writing on difficulty falling asleep: a polysomnographic study comparing to-do lists and completed activity lists.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2018. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5758411/
9. Drake C et al. “Caffeine effects on sleep taken 0, 3, or 6 hours before going to bed.” Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2013. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24235903/