Get ready for an extra hour of sleep on Sunday, Nov. 6. That’s when the clocks fall back at 2 a.m., ending Daylight Saving Time (DST) until Sunday, March 12, 2017.
(DST always ends the first Sunday of November and starts the second Sunday in March.)
The fall time change is meant to give us a little more daylight in the dark wintry mornings, and hopefully make it easier to roll out of bed.
READ MORE: 9 things you didn’t know about DST around the world
Time change side effects
If you’re an early riser who tends to work late, though, you might not see much sunlight over the next four months.
Those prone to seasonal affective disorder may be hit hardest by the switch. As days get shorter and shorter, people may notice symptoms like fatigue, low energy, sadness and depression.
Some may experience “cluster headaches.”
“These attacks, which occur every day, occur for six to eight weeks and then go away,” said Dr. Stewart Tepper of the Cleveland Clinic.
They typically start a couple of days after the time change, Tepper added, and affect more men than women.
READ MORE: 5 ways to beat the winter blues
There’s also usually a spike in car crashes and pedestrian injuries the week after the time change, police statistics show. So drivers should be extra careful.
On the plus side, the extra shuteye can be beneficial for sleep-deprived Canadians.
A 2012 study by University of Alabama found the risk of heart attacks goes down 10 per cent after the switch back to standard time.
The spring time change is worse
Unfortunately, the opposite rings true when the clock “springs forward” in March.
“The two days after the clocks roll forward there’s a spike in the number of heart attacks, strokes, and vascular events that occur,” cardiologist Mustafa Ahmed told Global News.
READ MORE: How Daylight Saving Time affects your internal clock
Researchers at Penn State, Virginia Tech and Singapore University also noticed there are massive productivity losses due to the hourly shift.
So why do we even have it?
Daylight Saving Time was originally introduced to cut energy costs during the war.
But studies have shown it doesn’t really do that.
“Daylight saving has never saved us energy and it never will,” said Michael Downing, author of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time.
In fact, the time change increased residential electricity consumption by one per cent in Indiana, a 2008 report found. It was performed two years after the state introduced DST.
The reason for that, experts argued, was that moving an hour of sunlight from the morning to the evening forces people to run their air conditioner more.
Every year, people seem to get fed up with the time change. Some jurisdictions (including B.C., California, and Alaska) have even petitioned to scrap it entirely.
WATCH: Toronto anchor Alan Carter sounded off last March on why it’s time to do away with DST
Not everyone hates it. Daylight saving has been said to boost business. In the U.S., for instance, an extra month of daylight saving raked in an extra $400 million in golf fees.
Regardless of how you feel about it, public officials say it’s a good idea to use the extra hour not just to sleep, but also to replace the batteries on your smoke and carbon monoxide alarms.
Here’s a closer look at the evolution of Daylight Saving time:
— With files from Carmen Chai and Tania Kohut, Global News
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