How to adjust to Daylight Savings Time

Spring forward time is upon us yet again. As Canadians look forward to longer days and shorter nights, we'll also be losing an hour of sleep when we change the clocks on Saturday night for Daylight Savings, which takes effect at 2am on Sunday.

That lost hour of sleep can have severe health consequences and can affect our functioning for up to a whole week after says Adam Moscovitch, medical director at Sleep and Fatigue Institute.

"Even one hour has relatively significant consequences," he tells Yahoo Canada Shine. "The car accident rates increase 8-10 per cent on the Monday following Daylight Savings and the incidents of heart attacks go up around 7 per cent during the week."

So, as we stumble into the blurry haze of Monday morning, there are things we can do to ease the strain on our health.

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Here are our five best tips to cope with an hour's loss of sleep.

1. Go to bed an hour early -- Moscovitch recommends hitting the sack an hour earlier on Saturday night to make up for the loss of sleep on Sunday.

2. Change your routine on the weekend -- Consider eating dinner earlier and taking a hot shower on Saturday and Sunday night to help you hit the hay before your normal bedtime.

3. Get plenty of sunlight -- When you wake up Monday morning get a blast of sunlight by opening your curtains. Consider drinking your cup of java right by the window. "The sunlight helps to correct the internal body clock," explains Moscovitch.

4. Pay extra attention on the road -- Because the car accident rate goes up on Monday rather significantly due to overtired drivers, Moscovitch reminds people to stay extra alert on the road. If a second cup of coffee will help you do so, go for it!

5. Avoid exercising late -- The week following Daylight Savings will require you to be extra vigilant about keeping a strict bedtime routine that allows you to unwind in the evenings. If your usual workout time is in the evenings, make sure you do it before 8 p.m. This will ensure your body is in a state of rest before it's lights out.

While an hour loss of sleep during Daylight Savings may seem like a small matter, it really isn't when you consider some basic facts about how important sleep is to our health and that one-third of Canadians aren't getting the recommended 7-8 hours of quality sleep each night that they should be.

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See below for some of the health and lifestyle problems a lack of sleep can cause.

1. Stroke -- A recent study by Moscovitch shows that middle-aged adults 45 and older who got less than 6 hours of sleep a night had a quadrupled risk of stroke.

2. Pain -- The more sleep deprived a person is the lower their pain tolerance. "I can practically trigger pain by manipulating a person's sleep to get less," says Moscovitch.

3. Workplace problems -- A Stanford University study with 6,000 employees from 21 different industries shows that 40-50 per cent of employees reported noticeable errors from their coworkers due to lack of sleep.

4. Obesity -- The more sleep deprived a person is the greater their chance of being obese, says Moscovitch.