Embrace the Extra Hour: Daylight Saving Time Ends This Weekend

Wed Oct 29 2025 01:51:44 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)

As Daylight Saving Time comes to a close, enjoy an extra hour of sleep and take the chance to reset your body's clock with morning sunlight.

This weekend marks the end of Daylight Saving Time in most parts of America, allowing people to gain an extra hour of sleep. However, experts advise incorporating outdoor time for morning sunlight, which aids in resetting our circadian rhythms. Research suggests that the switch back to standard time aligns better with our natural biological clocks and can be healthier for our well-being. While many lament the return of darker evenings, the debate around permanent standard time continues, as health professionals emphasize its benefits for sleep and overall health.

Plan on a glorious extra hour of sleep as most of America “falls back” into standard time. But make sure to get outside for some morning sun, too — it’ll help your body clock reset faster.

Daylight Saving Time ends at 2 a.m. local time on Sunday, which means you should set your clock back an hour before you go to bed. Standard time will last until March 8 when we will again “spring forward” with the return of daylight saving time.

There’s a lot of grumbling about the twice-a-year time changes. The spring switch tends to be harder, losing that hour of sleep we allegedly recover in the fall. But many people also mourn fall’s end of daylight saving time, when days already are getting shorter and moving the clocks can mean less daylight after school or work for exercise or outdoor fun.

Some health groups, including the American Medical Association and American Academy of Sleep Medicine, have long urged adopting standard time year-round.

New research from Stanford University agrees, finding that switching back-and-forth is the worst option for our health. The study showed sticking with either time option would be a bit healthier, but they found permanent standard time is slightly better — because it aligns more with the sun and human biology, what’s called our circadian rhythm.

“The best way to think about it is as if the central clock were like a conductor of an orchestra and each of the organs were a different instrument,” said Jamie Zeitzer, co-director of Stanford’s Center for Sleep and Circadian Sciences.

More light in the morning and less at night is key to keeping that rhythm on schedule — all the instruments in sync. When the clock is regularly disrupted by time changes or other reasons, he said each of the body’s organ systems, such as the immune system or metabolism, “just works a little less well.”

Most countries do not observe daylight saving time. For those that do — mostly in North America and Europe — the date that clocks are changed varies. In the U.S., Arizona and Hawaii don’t change and stay on standard time.

How the body reacts to light

The brain has a master clock set by exposure to sunlight and darkness. This circadian rhythm is a roughly 24-hour cycle that determines when we become sleepy and when we’re more alert. Morning light resets the rhythm.

And that circadian clock affects more than sleep, also influencing things like heart rate, blood pressure, stress hormones, and metabolism.

How do time changes affect sleep?

Even an hour change on the clock can throw off sleep schedules, with the spring change linked to increases in car crashes and heart attacks. Chronic sleep deprivation is connected to heart disease and cognitive decline.