Sunday, November 5, at 2 a.m., our clocks will fall back an hour as Daylight Saving Time comes to an end.
This is generally considered the better of the two time changes we experience in Michigan because we should get an extra hour of sleep. But that's not always the case as Dr. Shea Golding told me.
As the sleep psychologist for Corewell Health she says, in general, we are a sleep-deprived country. So setting the clocks back an hour this time of the year isn't a bad thing at all. But the clock change could cause some issues for kid's set schedules.
"It may be helpful to take a few days in advance and just have them stay up maybe 15 minutes later each night," Dr Golding said. "So it's not a full hour difference Saturday night, and they can kind of gradually work toward it. The side bonus if you get them up with their usual time, it means they'll be slightly more sleep-deprived on Saturday night, and be more likely to make it to their new week time."
Another thing to be mindful of is this change means the days are getting shorter, which means less sunlight, which means some potential issues with the way we function and feel.
In this case, there is some help we can turn to if you feel like you could shed a little more light on this situation.
"If you're sleep is getting thrown off from the change in amount of sun is those light boxes," Dr. Golding told me. "And so the best time for both fatigue and sleep, as well as for seasonal affective disorder is to use it in the morning pretty soon after you wake up. So you can kind of kill two birds with one stone if you're having trouble this season."
