Time Change Means Turning Clocks Back on Sunday

FRIDAY, Nov. 2 (HealthDay News) -- The massive East Coast power outages caused by Hurricane Sandy may make it moot for many, but clocks still need to be turned back an hour this weekend.

The good news is that the switch from daylight saving time to standard time means an extra hour of sleep on Sunday, Girardin Jean-Louis, a sleep specialist and professor of medicine at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, told HealthDay.

However, exposure to light at an earlier time in the morning may cause some people to wake up earlier anyway, and this could cause increased daytime sleepiness that results in impaired mental and physical abilities, Jean-Louis explained.

Those most likely to experience problems with the switch to standard time are people who tend to wake early in the morning and are sleepy early in the evening (morning types).

The National Sleep Foundation offers some tips to help you adjust to this weekend's time change:

Here are some suggestions for parents from Dr. Gabrielle Gold-von Simson, a pediatrician at NYU Langone Medical Center and an assistant professor of pediatrics at the NYU School of Medicine in New York City: