Three tips to help adjust to the start of daylight saving time this weekend

An Ottawa sleep expert recommends exposure to daylight, being active and getting lots of rest this weekend to help adjust to the one-hour time change.

Ottawa, Ontario and Quebec will "spring forward" this weekend for the start of daylight saving time. The time change will happen at 2 a.m. on Sunday, with clocks moving ahead one hour.

Experts say the practice of setting our clocks ahead one hour in March and then back again in November is bad for your heart. The New England Journal of Medicine says the risk of heart attacks increases by 24 per cent on the Monday following the switch to daylight saving time.

Sleep expert Andrew Holmes tells CTV Morning Live the time change can also result in impaired decision-making and irritability and mood swings.

"When we lose that hour's worth of sleep, there's a reduction in our ability to process information quickly, there's delayed reaction time," Holmes said. "When we're fatigued, there's an increase in fatal motor vehicle accidents."

Holmes, the founder of Sleep Efficiency in Ottawa, shared three tips with CTV Morning Live this week to adjust to the start of daylight saving time and improve your sleep this weekend.

Exposure to daylight

Holmes recommends getting more exposure to daylight early on Sunday, calling it a "critical piece" to adjusting to the time change.

"Our circadian rhythm, when this day synchronization takes place, what we're trying to do is kind of realign our circadian rhythm which is that 24-hour sleep cycle. It is directly impacted by our exposure to light," Holmes said.

"If we can get outside, expose our self to as much daylight as possible throughout the daytime it will help re-synchronize that circadian rhythm and kind of slowly start to readjust it."

Get active

Holmes suggests you and your family get outside and get active on Sunday.

"Exercise is obviously a great thing. Lots of studies show that the more we exercise it allows us to fall asleep a lot faster," Holmes told CTV Morning Live.

"We actually get to deeper stages of sleep as well. Our slow wave sleep is responsible for our physical restoration, so if we exercise our body goes into that very deep form of sleep and it keeps us there, preventing these arousals from happening throughout the course of the night."

Get lots of rest this weekend

The founder of Sleep Efficiency recommends being "well rested" heading into the start of daylight saving time.

"Make sure you get lots of sleep (Friday night) and (Saturday), so you're not already only operating on four-five hours of sleep," Holmes said.

"What can happen is you can create a sleep debt for Monday morning; if you've already short-changed yourself and not got enough sleep over the course of the weekend, then we've already lost that hour so you're already starting off Monday with a sleep debt and it can really impact you through the course of the week."

With files from CTV News Winnipeg's Dan Vadeboncoeur