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Is Daylight Saving Time Bad For You?
Hugh Pickens writes "According to experts on circadian rhythms, the hour shift in sleep schedule from Daylight Saving Time can have serious effects on some people's health, particularly in people with certain pre-existing health problems. One study found that men were more likely to commit suicide during the first few weeks of Daylight Saving Time (DST) than at any other time during the year, and another study showed that the number of serious heart attacks jumps 6% to 10% on the first three workdays after DST begins. Dr. Xiaoyong Yang, an assistant professor of comparative medicine and cellular and molecular physiology at Yale University, theorizes that shifts in biologic rhythms could trigger harmful inflammatory or metabolic changes at the cellular level, to which these individuals may be more susceptible."
I was going to say, FINE! Fix it: keep DST all year round!
As someone who suffers from SAD, depression, etc. I can attest to the fact that a strict sleep schedule is incredibly important to keeping me healthy and functional. DST rudely smashes all my carefully laid schedules and plans.
It may not seem like much, but even shifting things by a single hour and put me (and people like me) a very difficult spot. Light boxes and sunrise simulator alarm clocks help, but what helps the most is strict consistency in sleep/wake times. This is especially harmful to people with bipolar disorder because it can trigger a manic or depressive episode.
DST sucks!
How does this compare to people who travel one time zone over, let alone multiple time zones? Aren't these people (millions) in worse shape?
I saw an editorial cartoon perhaps 30 years ago. In the cartoon, Richard Nixon is depicted sitting in a rocking chair saying "I need to make this blanket longer, so that we can stay warm in the winter. So I'll cut one foot of the blanket off at one end, and sew it onto the other end." That's everything you need to know about Daylight Savings Time.
In other news, I believe that waking up to an alarm clock is hazardous to my health.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
How about this modest proposal: let's grind up the "weak" and turn them into cat food! In fact, let's have sweeps on a yearly basis. This will finally solve our problems and allow humanity to advance to the next level. One may even go so far as calling it a.... final solution.
To solve the problem is VERY simple, but the politicians don't like it. When you move to summer time, move the clocks 1/2 hour forward instead of 1 hour... and then LEAVE them there. No more going forwards and backwards wasting time changing countless clocks and gadgets, and no more bickering about moving the timezone multiple hours forward like the UK had recently just to please some European fascists.
Recent campaign for UK to be on Berlin Time
Portugal wants to move back to GMT
Take Nobody's Word For It.
The problem with DST is the free lunch mentality that goes with it. It was the first response of Congress to the "energy crisis" of the early 70's, and has remained the solution of choice for similar problems ever since. People genuinely believe they are getting "an extra hour of daylight", and expect other little bonuses to be handed to them just as painlessly. Sorry for the rant, but it's long been a pet peeve of mine.
Turing the clock one hour ahead is bound to screw people up. So why not just turn the clock back 23 hours? The time will be the same, and we all can take that extra "Daylight Savings Day" as an opportunity to lounge around, doing nothing productive.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
theorizes that shifts in biologic rhythms could trigger harmful inflammatory or metabolic changes at the cellular level, to which these individuals may be more susceptible."
...OR "Shit shit shit shit I'm late for work I'm gonna be fired again!" gets to you ...
Everytime I read one of these "studies" that "shows" stuff, I can't help but think that the researcher is a press whore or is just trying to get more funding by throwing out a ridiculously convoluted "theory" to explain a simple observation. After all, the "people get stressed out when they're late for work" hypothesis doesn't get you as many grants.
One fall Saturday night, I jokingly "reminded" my friend to turn his clock forward because of the time change - I said "Remember, fall forward, spring back". I figured his wife would catch the joke and correct him, and move the clock back an hour. Instead, he showed up for the 6AM restaurant opening time at 4 in the morning - which meant he must have gotten up at 2:30 AM ...
So he's sitting in the mall parking lot all by himself, wondering where everyone is, when the police pull up to find out why some black guy is just sitting there in his car in the middle of the night.
Maybe I can apply for a grant for stress caused by being early for work? I could get an ig-nobel.
Why don't they average it out to half an hour and just leave it there? Instead of swapping an hour twice a year, swap half an hour one time and don't bother doing it again.
I think the best part of DST is the opportunity to have this semi-annual anti-DST rant-fest. It's better than sunlight!
I am not a crackpot.
If the government gets rid of DST for the health benefits of a few then they should be required to make new laws for other causes of stress too: How about doing federal taxes, job interviews, coming home to the wife after a sneak trip to a strip club, traffic jams, law suits, the bogyman, XMAS shopping, public speaking, jock itch, earthquakes, tornadoes, ice storms and the list could go on forever. More so for some and less for others. Maybe our government should not try to protect us from all stresses in life?
As someone that has to deal with DST and timezones in the IT world I say we go with straight GMT and get rid of all of the rest. Then let local areas adjust accordingly. So in central time zone areas we go to work @ 14:00 GMT and get off at @ 23:00...
Zoid.com
If it affects you that strongly, why not try getting up 15 minutes earlier every few days for the couple of weeks preceding it so you'll be eased into it instead of shifting entirely at once?
...and it's been working out fine thus far.
Back during the last time change (autumn of 2010), I decided to not change my alarm clock's time. My computer and laptop would auto-adjust, and I'd still have to change the times on my DSLR camera, e-reader, and Nintendo DS. But the alarm clock time remains the same. When the alarm clock shows "9:30 PM", I go to bed (even though it's actually 8:30 PM). When the alarm clock shows "4:00 AM" (even though it's actually 3:00 AM), it sounds and I wake up.
The effect is that my day shifts by an hour twice yearly, but I do not. It was strange for the first week or two, having everything around me shifted by an hour (giving me an extra hour in the dark morning, and an hour less after work), but that's much better than the two weeks it would have taken me to even begin to adjust to an altered sleeping schedule.
Soon I'll find if shifting my day back (moving an hour from my morning to my afternoon) will feel as strange as it did in the autumn. One thing I do know for sure, I won't lose an hour of sleep in the transition.
Yes - the problem is that we have to change it at all, not that the sun goes down an hour later (and comes up an hour later). I prefer the light at the end of the day myself, so, indeed, make it DST year round. Problem solved.
My name is BMO and I live in Rhode Island. We here in the Northeast US are far enough east that during the winter, we go to work in the dark and we come home in the dark. Unless you have windows in your office or stock room or machine shop, or whatever, you never see the sun except on weekends. It's like being divorced and having partial custody - of sunlight.
The Eastern time zone is so wide that it stretches all the way to the Eastern border of Illinois. This is just nuts. When DST finally shows up in March, suddenly the sun sets at a reasonable hour.
New England and NY should secede from the Union and join the Maritime Provinces simply to get a sane time zone.
I'm sorry for ranting, but I'm tired of my Seasonal Affective Disorder and I can't wait for DST to get here. See? My SAD is showing!
--
BMO
In other words, people who are already in trouble feel compound effects with other changes in their lives.
Can an hour or two really have such a severe effect? If that was the case, shouldn't there be a massive effect when travelling and crossing time zones? A quick PubMed search didn't throw up any studies with jetlag and suicide or heart attack.
You're talking about results of a self-selected study, essentially. Most people who travel have a choice about when to do it, and don't do it when they're not up for it. Start involuntarily loading millions of people into airplanes with no regard whatsoever for their current health status and moving them to new time zones, then see what effect jetlag has on their health.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
has already decided to end daylight-saving time. :) Heck, Arizona lived without DST without problems...
Because "power savings" from this back-and-forth are 0.2%. And hassles from switch time are simply not worth it
Hyperom.com
What with all that darkness you guys deal with, I can't figure out why Scandinavian women evolved into such exquisite creatures. What does it matter, in the dark?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Here in Canada, most of us are far enough north that our summers are bright, DST or not. Here in Vancouver at "only" 49 degrees north, the latest sunset (if we stayed on standard time) is about 2025 PST, with twilight until nearly 2200 PST in June and July. Further north it's brighter, later. I've been in Yukon (63 degrees north) in May when it was like a bright overcast day at 0100. How much more do people want?
By the same token, our winters are dark, no matter what we do. The earliest sunset in Vancouver is about 1600 PST, and the latest sunrise is about 0800 PST.
I think messing with the clocks is pointless. There may be a sweet spot, say, around 40 degrees north, but Canada is well north of that.
...laura
Daylight Savings Time is just getting your ass out of bed earlier while pretending you're not. If you like to have light in the afternoon after you get out of work, go to work earlier and leave earlier. You're probably a techie like most of us, so you can probably work flexible hours like most of us. It's different if you're a factory assembly line worker and everybody has to be there at once for the line to roll, or a schoolteacher who's got to be there when class starts. (It's also different if you're a farmer and your cows are going to get up at dawn whatever time the clock says, but since most small farmers tend to also have town jobs, having dawn be later is a real pain.)
So stop messing with everybody else's clocks and get your ass out of bed earlier if that's what you want to do. Real morning people do it anyway (as do people with little kids.) Non-morning people don't want to get up anyway, and often don't. It's only you half-assed morning people who insist on adjusting the clocks to pretend you're not getting up as early as you are.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'm at work before dawn, DST or not. I'd rather have that extra hour of sunlight year-round, so I can actually try and do something productive when I get home.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
An early estimate of the 8.9 magnitude quake's effect on the planet shows it sped up rotation by about 1 microsecond.
So all we need is enough huge earthquakes to change the day by an hour -- ergo, no more need for daylight saving time! Okay, there might be a few undesirable side-effects...