WVXU: Is it time to stop 'falling back?' Sleep experts say yes

"When you have a miss-alignment between the timing of your own body clock and what the rest of the world wants you to do, they call that 'social jet lag.' You didn't get to fly to Europe or go anywhere but you get the negative effects," Romaker says.

When most of the country switches to daylight saving time in the spring, Romaker says research shows there's "more inflammatory chemicals running loose in the body. There's lower tone of the vagus nerve, which is the one that controls the heart and swallowing, so there's a higher heart rate and higher blood pressure and reduced sleep during daylight saving time in the summer," she says. "In the fall when you go backwards, that's been associated with mood disturbances and increased rates of suicide; traffic accidents increase in the first few days after the change, and fatal crashes increase 6% in the United States."

For Romaker, school safety is the biggest reason to stay on standard time year-round.

"When you have kids going to school in the dark in the morning, there's clear evidence that there's a much higher incidence of car accidents involving children," Romaker says. "We come home from work in the dark in standard time but we're a little more used to that and the kids aren't on the road. We do better with driving and accident rate when we follow the standard schedule."

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