When Halloween Meets the End of DST: A Perfect Storm for Your Circadian Rhythms 🎃⏰

This weekend, not only do we have Halloween — the one night a year when staying up late and eating your body weight in sugar is socially acceptable — but it’s also the end of DST (Daylight Saving Time).

When the clock strikes 2:00 a.m. on Sunday, it becomes 1:00 a.m. again. One extra hour of sleep sounds like a dream, right? Except… your body’s internal clock doesn’t get the memo that easily.

🎭 When “One More Hour” Isn’t That Simple

Your circadian rhythms — the 24-hour clocks built into your body — are wired to the light–dark cycle, not your digital clock. So when the time “falls back,” your body still wants to wake up and eat breakfast an hour earlier than before. For early birds, this might mean waking up before dawn (fun). For night owls, it can feel like jet lag without the vacation.

Add in a night of late parties, glowing jack-o-lanterns, and maybe a few too many pieces of chocolate, and you’ve got a recipe for serious circadian confusion come Monday morning.

🍬 Tricks (and Treats) to Stay on Track

Luckily, you can keep your rhythms from going full zombie mode with a few simple tweaks:

1. If you wake up earlier than you want, stay in the dark.
For this time change, odds are good that you’ll wake up earlier than your typical pattern—after all, you’ve been gifted an extra hour. If you’ve been meaning to become more of a morning person and like this new wake up time, reinforce it with morning light! But if you want to get back on your old schedule, keep it dim for the first hour or so of the day. 

2. You can, actually, stay up a bit for Halloween.
Honestly, if you’re trying to delay your circadian clock to adapt to the time change, Halloween is one of the most fun ways to do it. But remember: You’re only shifting an hour, so there’s no need for overkill—especially since people usually don’t have too hard a time adjusting to this time change’s hour delay. 

3. Think about the timing of that sugar and caffeine.
Your brain is crossing time zones, which can throw off rhythms not just in your sleep, but also in your gut. Try to stick to your unique eating and caffeine window. (Hint: you can find those in Arcashift)

4. Use Arcashift to get back in rhythm.
The Arcashift app helps you know exactly when to get light, eat, and wind down based on your personal circadian rhythms — so you can recover faster from schedule changes like this one. 

Because while Halloween chaos and a time change might mess with your clock, your rhythms don’t have to stay haunted forever. 👻 Don’t let Daylight Saving throw your rhythms off balance.

  Download Arcashift to get your sleep — and your groove — back in sync.