When daylight saving time (DST) begins (March 13 at 2 a.m. this year), many of us lose an hour of sleep, but others find the side effects linger for days or longer.
“The immediate impact of that first day is that you’re probably going to get an hour less of sleep,” says David J. Earnest, a professor in the department of neuroscience and experimental therapeutics at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine, who studies circadian rhythms—the human body’s master clock. “In theory, a one-hour time change shouldn’t really take more than a day or two to adapt to, but sometimes it does—for various reasons.”
The master body clock regulates a number of physiological functions—from hormone release and metabolism to fatigue and alertness. During the transition on or off DST, everything feels just a little out of sync.
