BATON ROUGE — It's time once again to lose an hour of sleep with the change to daylight saving time. Clocks will "spring forward" early Sunday morning. Church services and other activities on Sunday will seem as though they're starting an hour earlier.

The Associated Press this week offered a number of tips to help with the transition:

How to prepare for daylight saving time
Go to bed a little earlier Friday and Saturday nights, and try to get more morning light. Moving up daily routines, like dinner time or when you exercise, also may help cue your body to start adapting, sleep experts advise.

Afternoon naps and caffeine as well as evening light from phones and other electronic devices can make adjusting to an earlier bedtime even harder.

What happens to your brain when it’s lighter later?
The brain has a master clock that is set by exposure to sunlight and darkness. This circadian rhythm is a roughly 24-hour cycle that determines when we become sleepy and when we’re more alert. The patterns change with age, one reason that early-to-rise youngsters evolve into hard-to-wake teens.

Morning light resets the rhythm. By evening, levels of a hormone called melatonin begin to surge, triggering drowsiness. Too much light in the evening — that extra hour from daylight saving time — delays that surge and the cycle gets out of sync.

Sleep deprivation is linked to heart disease, cognitive decline, obesity and numerous other problems. And that circadian clock affects more than sleep, also influencing things like heart rate, blood pressure, stress hormones and metabolism.

How does the time change affect your health?
Fatal car crashes temporarily jump the first few days after the spring time change, according to a study of U.S. traffic fatalities. The risk was highest in the morning, and researchers attributed it to sleep deprivation.

The American Heart Association points to studies that suggest an uptick in heart attacks on the Monday after daylight saving time begins, and in strokes for two days afterward. Doctors already know that heart attacks, especially severe ones, are a bit more common on Mondays generally — and in the morning, when blood is more clot-prone.

It’s not clear why the time change would add to the Monday connection, Sanchez said, although probably something about the abrupt circadian disruption exacerbates factors such as high blood pressure in people already at risk.

When do I get this hour of sleep back?
Daylight saving time ends Nov. 3 this year.