It’s 8:30pm on an October night, and you’re already thinking about bed. In July, you were up past 11pm without trying. Now the couch feels like a trap and the alarm feels crueler every morning.
There’s real biology behind that pull: Your body reads the length of the day, and when the nights get longer, it responds.
What less daylight does to your body clock
Melatonin is the hormone that tells your body it’s night. Your brain releases it in the dark, and daylight shuts it off. When nights get longer, that release can stretch out too.
In a study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, researchers had eight healthy adults live on a “winter” schedule of 14 hours of darkness each night for four weeks. They compared it to a “summer” schedule with only 8 hours of darkness.
On the winter schedule, melatonin release lasted about 12.5 hours a night instead of about 10. Sleep grew from under 8 hours to about 11. Those volunteers had long, fully dark nights and nothing else to do, which isn’t how most of us live. The study still shows that the body adjusts its sleep to the length of the night when it gets the chance.
A 2023 study in Frontiers in Neuroscience looked at sleep lab data from 188 people in Berlin. In winter, they got about 30 more minutes of REM sleep, the stage tied to dreaming, than in summer. Total sleep ran about an hour longer in winter, though that gap was small enough that it could have been chance. Everyone in the study had come to the clinic with sleep problems, so the researchers want to see it repeated in healthy sleepers.
Why October feels like a turning point
In October, you lose daylight at both ends of the day. Mornings stay dark longer, and evenings get dark before dinner.
Then daylight saving time ends on Sunday, Nov. 1. Mornings get brighter for a while, but sunset lands an hour earlier on the clock. For a lot of people, that’s when the afternoon slump and the early-evening sleepiness really show up.
Mood and energy
Plenty of people feel lower on energy or a little down as the days get shorter. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) notes that for some people, these changes go further and affect how they feel, think and act day to day.
That more serious pattern is called seasonal affective disorder, or SAD. NIMH describes it as a type of depression that comes back around the same season each year. Sleeping much more than usual is one of its possible signs in the winter form. If your mood or energy drops for weeks at a time, talk to a health care provider.
How to work with the season
Keep your wake-up time the same. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) recommends getting up at the same time every day, weekends included. Your wake time is the anchor that keeps the rest of your schedule steady.
Let your bedtime move earlier. If you’re sleepy at 9:30, go to bed at 9:30. Going to bed earlier while your alarm stays put gives you more sleep and keeps your mornings steady. The AASM recommends at least 7 to 8 hours a night for adults.
Get outside in the morning. The National Sleep Foundation says bright morning light helps you feel awake and energized, and it suggests at least an hour outdoors in the morning or afternoon. A walk, coffee on the porch or a trip to the store on foot all count.
Keep naps short. A nap can help you get through a dark afternoon, but a long one can make bedtime harder. Our guide to the nap length that actually helps covers the timing.
Make an early bedtime easy to say yes to. If your body wants more sleep this time of year, give it a comfortable place to get it. Our Kiwi Organic Mattress has a medium-firm feel, with a layer of GOLS certified organic latex over individually pocketed coils.
When more sleep doesn’t help
A little extra sleepiness in the fall fits with everything above. If you’re sleeping far longer than usual and still wake up tired, or your low energy lasts for weeks, bring it up with your doctor.
If you feel like yourself otherwise, go ahead and let yourself sleep a bit more. Go to bed a little earlier, keep your alarm where it is and get some daylight the next morning.
