Daylight savings time ends–turn back your clocks tonight, sleep, be healthier and help kids adjust

For those who want to be ahead of the game, as it were, it's time to turn back the clock one hour before you go to bed tonight, (except in Arizona, Hawaii and US possessions) or for those who like to party, you'll get an extra hour.  It's a good idea to change your batteries in your smoke detector as well.  Doctors suggest that the time change back can be healthy:

"Generally, it is always easier to stay up an hour later than to go to sleep an hour earlier, so most people have relatively little problem setting the clocks back in the fall," said Dr. Steven Feinsilver, director of the Center for Sleep Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, in an email. "This is because our basic circadian rhythm (the 'body clock') actually seems to be programmed for a longer than 24 hour day. It runs a little slow."

"The circadian clock does not change to the social change," said chronobiology researcher Till Roenneberg of Ludwig Maximilans University in Munich, Germany. "During the winter, there is a beautiful tracking of dawn in human sleep behavior, which is completely and immediately interrupted when daylight saving time is introduced in March."

Here's how to help kids adjust to the new schedule as we fall back:

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Dakota O'Leary

Dakota O'Leary is a freethinker, and often sassy, scholar of theology and literature. She got her Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Theology from the State University of New York College at Buffalo, and her Master of Arts degree in Theology and Literature from Antioch University-Midwest. She is a contributing writer focusing on eschatology, biblical prophecy, and general religious news. Dakota is a co-host of the God Discussion radio show, offering insight to the news stories of the week. We like to call her "our in-house Biblical prophecy expert" as her articles on eschatology have received over 200,000 views on God Discussion.

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  • http://www.goddiscussion.com admin

    Admittedly, I am very glad DST is finally here for purposes of hosting the show. This bumps my personal time to do the show to 7, which is a lot better than 6.

    Deborah

  • http://www.houseofbetazed.com Mriana

    I really do not like DST. I really wish we would stay with sun time all year around. Besides, I'm not sure how it helps the farmers anyway. They pay more attention to the sun than they do to the clock.

    • http://www.goddiscussion.com admin

      I'd love it if they did away with these systems. But admittedly, when growing up in the Midwest, it would be dark out when it was time to leave school. With a long walk home, we were grateful for the extra hour of light.