Experts Reveal How Daylight Saving Time May Affect Your Health

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork)-- With longer days, warmer temperatures and budding plants, Spring is the season some people wait all year for.

"Give me 50s or 60s and I'll be pretty happy," Murray Hill resident Sujit Chawla told TV 10/55's Elise Finch.

"We change from four or five months of blah grey, dark and then you see a little burst of color and all that," Seaford, Long Island resident John Abbate said.

The plants that signify the season can also lead to problems.

"We're starting off with the big T, tree pollen, and that's causing a lot of misery. Right now Juniper, Alder, some of these early tree pollens," Dr. Clifford Bassett, of Allergy & Asmtha Care of New York, said.

He said his patient volume has increased dramatically in the past week.

"Red irritated eyes, itchiness, nasal symptoms, sneezing that doesn't stop, stuffy nose," Bassett said.

The countdown to Spring also requires us to "spring forward," and that means one less hour of sleep at night.

"I definitely feel if for a couple of days after we spring ahead," Harlem resident Lana Herbert said.

Dr. Lisa Liberatore is a sleep specialist at Lennox Hill Hospital. She said daylight saving time causes a small loss of sleep that has been known to have big consequences in the days that follow, like an increase in car accidents and heart attacks.

"There's a lot of our body mechanisms that only happen during sleep. So you're not allowing the hormonal system of your body to work properly and you're not allowing your body to repair itself and to get rid of toxins unless you give your body adequate rest time," Liberatore explained.

Sleep recommendations are seven hours for adults and nine hours for children. Experts also suggest that you spend more time outdoors, so the sunlight can help your body clock advance.