There are competing movements around the world to maintain either standard time or daylight savings time. Like present day politics it is a polarizing issue. As we observe exercise as stress and prescribe it as such we are well versed in recovery and rest strategies.
We have made similar arguments for proper recovery with regards to regular walking and avoiding being sedentary. Few will argue against such recommendations but few heed the advice. Habits are tough to change even if they are bad for you and sleep cycles fall square into this problem.
As always rather than telling people what to do we simply try to make the science accessible and let people’s conscience be their guide. In a nutshell the health of your circadian rhythms* are strongly influenced by daylight and lack thereof. We have evolved to key off of such and the preponderance of the evidence suggests significant side-effects of moving away from this influence in modern times.
Much like regular walking your body relies and benefits from operating as it has evolved to (regular bouts of walking and environment induced sleep cycles). Proper sleep, not just in quantity but in quality is paramount to stress recovery. We see the massive positive and negative influences of sleep patterns in our personal training clients ability to be fit.
Suffice to say whatever you do, whichever side you fall on you benefit from prioritizing deep sleep cycles. The evidence suggests the natural way to go is gently getting to bed earlier and earlier as winter months approach and then reversing come spring. Do we need to actually change our clocks? Likely that is not necessary for the competent adult in control of their life…but that is a whole other discussion.
* https://www.nature.com/subjects/circadian-rhythms
Be well, be strong,
Andrew and Tierney
wefit.ca 