Changing Clocks – Inside and Out
It has been a couple of weeks since the clocks went back for Autumn/Winter and many people do struggle with the changes, Feeling drowsy and lethargic.
Our valued steering group member
Dr Simon J Durrant – Director of Lincoln Sleep Research Centre, University of Lincoln and President of British Sleep Society, shares his knowledge to help us understand the reasoning behind the clock changes we experience and some insights into the history of time as we know it.
Syncing Clocks
Spring forward and Fall back. Twice a year that aphorism comes to mind as we engage in the ritual of changing the clocks. These days with phones, computers and even some clocks connected to the internet, the ritual is somewhat theoretical compared to the days of manually updating every clock in the house. However, one clock that does need manually updating is our internal body clock.
Contrary to what you might imagine, our body clock does not run on a strictly 24-hour cycle. In fact, if left to its own devices, it runs slightly slow, with our sleep and wake times consequently getting later and later as time goes on. However, our daily dose of sunlight helps to reset our clock each day and keeps it running to time (as well as providing some essential vitamin D). This ensures that our 24-hour physiological cycle is able to match our 24-hour activity cycle and allows for consistent bedtimes and wake times.
Twice a year, our social and circadian clocks are jolted out of sync by an instantaneous one-hour shift. In the Spring, as clocks go forward, we find ourselves deprived of an hour of sleep while also wanting to go to bed an hour later but still having to wake up on time. In the Autumn as clocks go back, we have the luxury of an extra hour in bed but in practice often wake early and feel the need to go to bed early.
Railways and Palaces
This twice-yearly ritual is actually a relatively recent thing. In fact, until the nineteenth century there was not even a universal time system to synchronise to. Clocks were set locally according to the sun and would be later the further west you went. The advent of the railways and their timetables required a more unified time across longer distances and so Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was adopted across the UK from 1847. There were still exceptions, however; the royal estate of Sandringham was famously set half an hour ahead of GMT to provide King Edward VII was more hunting time in the evening. One of the consequences of a unified time system was that places further away from Greenwich, such as the west coast of Ireland, found themselves increasingly out of sync with solar time, with the sun rising and setting comparatively late.
Saving Daylight
During WW1, energy consumption and productivity both became of paramount importance. One way to help both was to increase daylight in the evening at the expense of very early morning daylight (during which people were typically asleep anyway) and thus the concept of daylight saving time (or summer time) was born. Germany was the first to adopt this, with the British soon following in 1916. Subsequently this was adopted in peacetime from 1922 and has continued to the present day barring double summertime during WW2 and a brief experiment with Central European Time 1968-1971.
Population Jetlag
The twice-yearly clock transition amounts to minor jetlag affecting the entire population. While the degree of the shift is relatively mild, the sheer number of people affected means that it can result in some fairly serious health consequences for some individuals. As such, various proposals have been forward to abolish it. The most popular of these is permanent daylight savings time, or as its advocates would describe it, “permanent summertime”. While the image of evening barbecues in the late summer sun all year round is certainly attractive, the reality would be decidedly more grim in the winter months, with some parts of the UK not seeing the sun rise until approaching 10am and many people experiencing no daylight outside of work hours for weeks at a time.
Sleep scientists mostly advocate the opposite fixture – permanent GMT. This would shorten summer evenings slightly but still leave plenty of light in the evenings (beyond 9pm in many places) while also ensuring morning light during the winter to keep our circadian clocks running to time.
Winding your Internal Clock
If you are struggling to cope following a clock change, the following tips can help you to adapt more easily:-
- Give yourself time, in every sense. If the clocks have gone forward, allow yourself an extra half hour in bed on the Sunday morning if you can before returning to your usual clock time the following day. This will spread the change over two days rather than expecting your body to instantly adapt.
- If the clocks have gone forward, try to go to bed at your usual time even if it feels too early. Adopt your best sleep routine to help you get to sleep on time regardless of feeling less sleepy than normal.
- When the clocks go back, resist the temptation to get up early and instead read in bed if you find you have woken early and are unable to get back to sleep.
- Similarly, if you feel like you want to go to bed early after the clocks have gone back – especially as the dark autumn nights close in – resist the temptation, at least until you have fully adapted to the change.
- If you need to stay up later or wake up earlier but struggle to do so, consider using a lightbox to help stay awake and train your circadian rhythm.
- Above all, be kind to yourself and try not to worry. Not everyone adapts to the time change at the same speed, but almost everyone adapts in the end. You will get there and probably sooner than you think.
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