An hour of sleep will be robbed from Brits on Sunday evening — all in the name of daylight savings. Despite gaining an extra hour of evening light, which encourages us to get outside and soak up much-needed vitamin D, there are a few downsides.
Experts believe the disruption and sleep loss may raise the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
The tradition, which is followed in most of Europe, the US and parts of Asia, has also been linked to a surge in car accidents.
That’s not to mention the obvious bad mood caused by a lack of sleep.
Clocks have moved forward an hour every spring since WW1 in a bid for longer evenings and to conserve coal, before being reverted back at the end of October.
Here, MailOnline explores the science behind changing the clocks and your health — revealing some of the benefits and the downsides to altering the clocks.
The clocks going forward brings us an extra hour of sunlight in the evening, this means we may feel happier, we get more vitamin D and we might be more active in the evenings. But, the time shift is not good for everybody, some people struggle to adjust to the time change, this has been linked to more car accidents and an increased risk of strokes
Every spring at 1am on the last Sunday in March, we lose an hour of sleep to gain more evening light — a tradition that began in WW1, all in a bid for longer evenings and to conserve coal. Although it can be harder to get out of bed, you do get an extra hour of sunlight each evening
Mood boost
Losing an hour of sleep over the weekend may leave many grumpy.
But to make up for this, people can expect a mood boost over the summer months due to lighter evenings.
‘Light elevates mood and reduces stress, so there might be some mood changes because of the extra light in the evening,’ says Professor Russell Foster, one of the world’s leading experts on the circadian rhythm, or the body’s internal clock, at the University of Oxford.
Sunlight is important for the production of the feel-good hormone serotonin, according to the mental health charity Mind.
The charity explains that when sunlight passes through the eye, it affects part of the retina that triggers serotonin production.
What are circadian rhythms?
Circadian rhythms are 24-hour cycles linked to your bodies internal clock.
These rhythms are found in many different organisms including flowers to help them open and close.
Nocturnal animals also use their circadian rhythm to keep them from leaving their shelter during the day.
In people, circadian rhythms coordinate the digestive system, regulate hormones and it controls your sleep-wake cycles.
How does it work?
All the 24-hour cycles throughout the body are connected to a master clock in your brain and at different times of the day it signals to regulate activity in your body.
During the day sunlight causes the brain to send awake signals to keep us alert and active.
At night, the master clock in the brain sparks the production of melatonin, a hormone that promotes sleep, and then keeps transmitting signals that help us stay asleep through the night.
When the body’s circadian rhythm is disrupted, from jet lag or shift work, the internal clock can struggle to make the body fall asleep, stay asleep and have a lie in.
Without exposure to sunlight your serotonin levels could drop, it warns.
Extra vitamin D
More daylight hours gives people more time to soak up evening sun.
This boosts levels of vitamin D — which the body creates from direct sunlight on the skin when outdoors.
Professor Foster warned that there is ‘a lot of evidence’ the people in the UK are vitamin deprived.
While Brits can get enough vitamin D from sunlight between late March and the end of September — during Daylight Savings Time (DST) — health chiefs recommend taking a supplement outside of this window.
‘There are good sides to DST, such as coming home earlier (by the sun clock) from school or work and having more hours of daylight during our free time after work,’ writes Professor Till Roenneberg, in his article Why Should We Abolish Daylight Saving Time?
The sunshine vitamin is vital for bone health.
Vitamin D helps to regulate the amount of calcium and phosphate in the body, according to the NHS.
It is these nutrients that keep our teeth, bones and muscles healthy.
On top of this, having sufficient vitamin D levels has also been linked to a lower risk of depression.
