Spring Forward: It's That Time Of Year Again

DETROIT (WWJ) - It's that "time" of year again, when we should have  "sprung forward" and set our clocks  one hour ahead.

Daylight Saving Time officially began at 2 a.m. Sunday morning, but our bodies could take days to adjust to the change. Gary Trock, a urologist and sleep specialist at Beaumont Hospital, explained why.

"We have a clock in our brain and the change not only affects our sleep but it affects our mood, our performance, our attention span, it affects heart rhythm and different other functions. So, it takes a few days to reset," said Trock.

Even in the most difficult cases, Trock said you should be back to a normal sleep pattern in no more than a week. And if your concerned about messing-up your sleep pattern, Trock has a few tips.

"Don't abuse caffeine if you're sleepy during the daytime because that will make it harder to sleep at night, don't drink alcohol at night to try to fall asleep, and one of the most critical things is not using the bedroom for anything other than sleep. So, homework, computers, text messages, phone calls, those should be done in a different room and never in the sleep room," he said.

Some were having a tough time adjusting to the time change.  Ann-Marie Misch, a personal trainer who was running late for work...stopped at Bigby Coffee in Novi.

"I woke up and getting ready for work and I realized, I looked at my clock in the kitchen and it said 6:17, and I'm like o.k. I have time and then I looked at my phone seeing if I missed a text or a phone call and all the sudden it said 7:17, and so I'm like Oh, oh my gosh , so I started running around."

Joe Stuban, of Walled Lake, just got back from a business trip to India where the time is 10 and a half hours ahead.

"This is hard to figure out what's going on & exactly what time it is."

So, where did it all begin? Daylight Saving Time was instituted in the United States during World War I in order to save energy for war production by taking advantage of the later hours of daylight between April and October. The passage of the Energy Policy Act in 2005 extended Daylight Saving Time by four weeks -- from the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November.

Daylight Saving Time will end on Nov. 4, when we'll set our clocks back one hour.