With daylight saving time set to end, many Manitobans may be looking forward to an extra hour of sleep Monday morning.
But the time change that leads to that extra hour of shuteye can also be costly, says Amy Deacon, founder of Toronto Wellness Counseling.
“The truth of it is that any time we interfere with our body’s natural circadian rhythm, it really does take a toll on our mental health,” the registered social worker and clinical traumatologist told 680 CJOB’s The Start, Friday.
Daylight saving time ends this coming Sunday, Nov. 6, at 2 a.m., meaning most Canadians — including Manitobans — will turn their clocks back an hour.
Daylight saving time was first proposed in 1895 by New Zealand entomologist George Hudson. He proposed the change because it would allow him more daylight hours to find and inspect insects.
The idea behind the clock shift is to maximize sunlight in the Northern Hemisphere, as days start to lengthen in the spring and then wane in the fall.
The logic is that by springing forward and falling back, people add an hour of sunlight to the end of the workday. But the benefits of this change are controversial, and the shift can have measurable impacts on health.
Doctors from the University of Turku in Finland have suggested that the risk of strokes and heart attacks increases by seven per cent following the time change.
In addition, the number of car crashes also tends to increase once we make the time shift. (A study in the New England Journal of Medicine reported there was an eight per cent jump in car crashes the day after a time change.)
With less evening light and shortened days, there is a tendency to be less active in the evening, Wendy Hall, a B.C. nurse and professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia, told Global News last year.
Deacon says along with changing the body’s rhythms, the time change means most people won’t be getting enough sunlight until the time changes back in spring.
She says that can lead to an increase in seasonal affective disorder (SAD), something she worries will only be amplified this winter with low moods already being experienced through the pandemic.
“When our bodies don’t get the same exposure to sunlight, we’re more prone to feeling down to feeling those winter blues, depression, anxiety,” she said.
“At the same time, as we’re getting less sunlight in the winter months, our bodies actually produce more melatonin, which makes us sleepy and less serotonin. And serotonin is our happy hormone.
“So if you put all of these things together, we’re feeling more lethargic, less energized, and presenting a low mood — feeling a little bit more sad, as opposed to happy and joyful.”
Deacon suggests bundling up and taking a daily 20 to 30 minute walk through the winter to get sunlight, or trying light therapy with special SAD lamps.
To get ahead of the time change and winter months, Deacon encourages getting outside and exercising early to boost endorphins, and being “proactively social.”
“Those darker months are often associated with cocooning, but when we are more prone to anxiety and depression, we want to make sure that we have real relationships in our life with real connections because that can really buffer our resilience as well,” she said.
“Who wants to go out when it’s snowing and freezing cold? But the truth of it is that we know that specifically for mental health disorders, anxiety, depression, burnout, it gets a lot worse in winter.
“Sometimes it really is short term discomfort, having to put on those boots, having to warm up the car, having to drive to a friend’s house. But it’s a long term gain.”
— with files from Michelle Butterfield
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